BIOFOODWEB · Integrating biogeography and food web ecology to understand the influence of species diet breadth on their range size.

Integrating biogeography and food web ecology to understand the influence of species diet breadth on their range size.

Understanding the patterns of species range distributions and the mechanisms regulating them is at the basis of fundamental knowledge on species’ vulnerability to extinction in an increasingly modified world. Biogeographical studies analysing species range sizes have traditionally ignored the role of species interactions in determining large-scale biogeographical patterns. BIOFOODWEB aims at bridging the gap between biogeographical studies and community ecology by disentangling the influence of species interactions in determining species geographical range size (i.e. the extent of its spatial distribution). Species geographical range size has been a central aspect of biogeographic research. Multiple studies have attempted to explain the variation in geographical range size across species using niche breadth (i.e., the set of environments or resources that it can inhabit or use). Intuitively, the wider the variety of conditions in which it can survive, the more widespread it will be, leading to a positive relationship between niche breadth and geographical range size. Yet, species niche breadth is a multidimensional concept. While some dimensions of the niche, such as habitat use or environmental tolerance, have been more prominently tested as predictors of species range size, the influence of diet breadth (i.e., set of interacting partners a species has) has been seldom explored. The major goal of this project is to establish a general understanding of the relationship between species diet breadth and its range size. BIOFOODWEB aims to determine the role of spatial and biogeographical processes in this relationship, which is key to predict the response of the spatial distribution of species on earth to global environmental change. So far, a major obstacle to obtain a general understanding of the relationship between diet breadth and range size has been the lack of big datasets containing information on biotic interactions across large biogeographical gradients. BIOFOODWEB draws on novel datasets, combined with the development of new theoretical tools, to propose an integrative approach capable of bridging the gap between biogeographical studies and species interaction networks.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз