Ecological opportunity and the evolution of habitat preferences in an arid-zone bird: implications for speciation in a climate-modified landscape.

ABSTRACT: Bioclimatic models are widely used to investigate the impacts of climate change on species distributions. Range shifts are expected to occur as species track their current climate niche yet the potential for exploitation of new ecological opportunities that may arise as ecosystems and communities remodel is rarely considered. Here we show that grasswrens of the Amytornis textilis-modestus complex responded to new ecological opportunities in Australia's arid biome through shifts in habitat preference following the development of chenopod shrublands during the late Plio-Pleistocene. We find evidence of spatially explicit responses to climatically driven landscape changes including changes in niche width and patterns of population growth. Conservation of structural and functional aspects of t

SUBMITTER: Norman JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4726247 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature