TY - JOUR
T1 - Hypervolume concepts in niche- and trait-based ecology
AU - Blonder, Benjamin
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments – John Drake and William Godsoe greatly improved the manuscript through their thoughtful reviews. I am grateful for comments from Robert R. Junker, Arne Bathke, Jonas Kuppler, Marc Macias Fauria, Naia Morueta Holme, Imma Oliveras, Manuela Schreyer, Carlos Perez Carmona, and Francesco de Bello. I thank Christine Lamanna, Cyrille Violle, Brian J. Enquist, Cecina Babich Morrow, Brian Maitner, Drew Kerkhoff, and Hujie Qiao for their feedback. Funding – This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/M019160/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Authors
PY - 2018/11
Y1 - 2018/11
N2 - Hutchinson's n-dimensional hypervolume concept for the interpretation of niches as geometric shapes has provided a foundation for research across different fields of ecology and evolution. There is now an expanding set of applications for hypervolume concepts, as well as a growing set of statistical methods available to operationalize this concept with data. The concept has been applied to environmental, resource, functional trait, and morphometric axes and to different scales, i.e. from individuals, species, to communities and clades. Further, these shapes have been variously interpreted as niches, ecological or evolutionary strategy spaces, or proxies for community structure. This paper highlights these applications’ shared mathematical framework, surveys uses of the hypervolume concept across fields, discusses key limitations and assumptions of hypervolume concepts in general, provides a critical guide to available statistical estimation methods, and delineates the situations where hypervolume concepts can be useful.
AB - Hutchinson's n-dimensional hypervolume concept for the interpretation of niches as geometric shapes has provided a foundation for research across different fields of ecology and evolution. There is now an expanding set of applications for hypervolume concepts, as well as a growing set of statistical methods available to operationalize this concept with data. The concept has been applied to environmental, resource, functional trait, and morphometric axes and to different scales, i.e. from individuals, species, to communities and clades. Further, these shapes have been variously interpreted as niches, ecological or evolutionary strategy spaces, or proxies for community structure. This paper highlights these applications’ shared mathematical framework, surveys uses of the hypervolume concept across fields, discusses key limitations and assumptions of hypervolume concepts in general, provides a critical guide to available statistical estimation methods, and delineates the situations where hypervolume concepts can be useful.
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U2 - 10.1111/ecog.03187
DO - 10.1111/ecog.03187
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85030161832
SN - 0906-7590
VL - 41
SP - 1441
EP - 1455
JO - Ecography
JF - Ecography
IS - 9
ER -