Toward an improved conceptual understanding of North American tree species distributions

Species distributions have often been assumed to represent climatic limitations, yet recent evidence has challenged these assumptions and emphasized the potential importance of biotic interactions, dispersal limitation, and disturbance. Despite significant investigation into these factors, an integrated understanding of where and when they may be important is lacking. Here, we review evidence for the factors underlying the historical and contemporary distributions of North American tree species and argue that a cohesive conceptual framework must be informed by an understanding of species ecological and evolutionary history. We further demonstrate that available evidence offers little indication of a significant, independent influence of biotic interactions or dispersal limitation on species distributions. Disturbance may provide important constraints on distributions in limited contexts. Overall, historic and contemporary evidence suggests that species distributions are strongly influenced by climate, yet examples of disequilibrium with climate abound. We propose that differences among life stages and the impacts of human land use may contribute to explain these inconsistencies and are deserving of greater research attention.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Ecosphere

• Publication date

  2017-06-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/ECS2.1853
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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