Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Apr 22;276(1661):1391-3.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0100. Epub 2009 Feb 25.

Geographic range limits of species

K J Gaston  1
Affiliations

Geographic range limits of species

K J Gaston. Proc Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Understanding the forms that the geographic range limits of species take, their causes and their consequences are key issues in ecology and evolutionary biology. They are also topics on which understanding is advancing rapidly. This themed issue of Proc. R. Soc. B focuses on the wide variety of current research perspectives on the nature and determinants of the limits to geographic ranges. The contributions address important themes, including the roles and influences of dispersal limitation, species interactions and physiological limitation, the broad patterns in the structure of geographic ranges, and the fundamental question of why at some point species no longer evolve the ability to overcome the factors constraining their distributions and thus fail to continue to spread. In this introduction, these contributions are placed in the wider context of these broad themes.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Anderson B.J., Akçakaya H.R., Araújo M.B., Fordham D.A., Martinez-Meyer E., Thuiller W., Brook B.W. Dynamics of range margins for metapopulations under climate change. Proc. R. Soc. B. 2009;276:1415–1420. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1681 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Antonovics J. The effect of sterilizing diseases on host abundance and distribution along environmental gradients. Proc. R. Soc. B. 2009;276:1443–1448. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1256 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bridle J.R., Gavaz S., Kennington W.J. Testing limits to adaptation along altitudinal gradients in rainforest Drosophila. Proc. R. Soc. B. 2009;276:1507–1515. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1601 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brown J.H., Lomolino M.V. 2nd edn. Sinauer Associates; Sunderland, MA: 1998. Biogeography.
    1. Brown J.H., Stevens G.C., Kaufman D.M. The geographic range: size, shape, boundaries and internal structure. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 1996;27:597–623. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.27.1.597 - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources