Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; National Environmental Science Programme, Threatened Species Recovery Hub, Australia.
Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2017 May;32(5):346-355. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.02.013. Epub 2017 Mar 8.
A fundamental aim of conservation biology is to understand how species respond to threatening processes, with much research effort focused on identifying threats and quantifying spatial and temporal patterns of species decline. Here, we argue that threats often reduce the realized niche breadth of declining species because environmental, biotic, and evolutionary processes reduce or amplify threats, or because a species' capacity to tolerate threats varies across niche space. Our 'niche reduction hypothesis' provides a new lens for understanding why species decline in some locations and not others. This perspective can improve management of declining species by identifying where to focus resources and which interventions are most likely to be effective in a given environment.
保护生物学的一个基本目标是了解物种如何应对威胁过程，因此大量研究工作都集中在识别威胁以及量化物种减少的时空模式上。在这里，我们认为，威胁通常会缩小衰退物种的实际生态位宽度，因为环境、生物和进化过程会减少或放大威胁，或者因为物种在不同生态位空间中对威胁的耐受能力不同。我们的“生态位缩减假说”为理解为什么某些地点的物种会减少而其他地点的物种不会减少提供了一个新视角。这种观点可以通过确定在特定环境中资源集中的位置以及哪些干预措施最有可能有效来改善衰退物种的管理。
