A hard fruit to swallow

• 成果类型: Editorial Material
• 署名作者: Hargreaves, Anna L.; Alexander, Jake M.
• 署名单位: McGill University; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-13834
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adq4500
• 发表日期: 2024-07-19
• 页码: 260-261
• 关键词: optimal foraging theory

摘要

Children are often taught about the natural world through facts about species, such as what a toucan eats. Yet species are not homogeneous, and different populations within a species vary in how they use their environment. Gaining a better understanding of this variation is a key challenge in ecology. One idea is that niche variation should be particularly apparent toward the edges of species' geographic distributions, where the amount or quality of habitat declines ( 1 ). However, there is little theory that predicts which niche components will vary toward range edges and remarkably few compelling examples from nature. On page 331 of this issue, Martins et al. ( 2 ) offer both, combining optimal foraging theory and observed foraging patterns to predict and demonstrate that fruit-eating (frugivorous) birds have narrower diet niches toward the edges of their geographic ranges. Accounting for such heterogeneity in resource use will be important for accurately predicting species' responses to environmental change ( 3 , 4 ).