Mapping the fundamental niche: Physiology, climate, and the distribution of a nocturnal lizard

Abstract

The fundamental niche can be viewed as the set of conditions resources that allow a given organism to survive reproduce in the absence of biotic interactions. Quantitative descriptions of the environmental variables with which organisms are associated are becoming common with the advent of geographic information systems (GIS). Although such descriptive approaches to the niche are useful for interpolating species distributions, they implicitly incorporate biotic interactions and therefore do not represent the fundamental niche. A mechanistic understanding of the fundamental niche, when combined with GIS data, can provide us with greater insight into the causes of distribution and abundance, a..