Metapopulation Perspectives on the Evolution of Species’ Niches

The tapestry of the history of life reveals striking examples of both niche conservatism, and rapid niche evolution, where "niche" is used in the Grinnellian sense as that set of conditions, resources, etc. which permit populations of a species to persist in a locality without recurrent immigration. Recent years have seen the development of a rich body of theoretical studies aimed at understanding when one might expect niche conservatism vs. evolution in spatially and temporally heterogeneous environments. This literature has illuminated the role of many factors, such as genetic architecture, density dependence, and asymmetries in dispersal, in determining the likelihood of niche conservatism. However, most studies have assumed very simple spatial scenarios, such as a single source population (with conditions within a species’ niche) supplying immigrants into a sink population (where conditions are outside the niche). In this contribution, after summarizing key insights from this prior literature, we will present the results of theoretical studies which examine how the spatial structure of the landscape can modulate the direction and pattern of niche evolution.