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Niche breadth and geographic range : ecological compensation for geographic rarity in rainforest frogs

Williams, Yvette M. and Williams, Stephen E. and Alford, Ross A. and Waycott, Michelle and Johnson, Christopher N. (2006) Niche breadth and geographic range : ecological compensation for geographic rarity in rainforest frogs. Biology letters, 2 (4). pp. 532-535. ISSN 1744-9561

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Abstract

We investigated the relationship between diet specialization and geographical range in Cophixalus, a genus of microhylid frogs from the Wet Tropics of northern Queensland, Australia. The geographical ranges of these species vary from a few square kilometres in species restricted to a single mountain top to the entire region for the widespread species. Although macroecological theory predicts that species with broad niches should have the largest geographical ranges, we found the opposite: geographically rare species were diet generalists and widespread species were diet specialists. We argue that this pattern is a product of extinction filtering, whereby geographically rare and therefore extinction-prone species are more likely to persist if they are diet generalists.

Item Type:Article
Keywords:niche breadth, geographical range, extinction, rarity, diet, ecological specialization
Subjects:270000 Biological Sciences > 270700 Ecology and Evolution > 270708 Conservation and Biodiversity
ID Code:1651
Deposited By:Collin Storlie
Deposited On:12 Sep 2007
Last Modified:16 Oct 2008 02:56

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