Biology Stack Exchange
Biology Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [species-distribution]

31 questions
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Do ring species exist?

In trying to understand evolution better, I have been looking at examples of speciation, and have thus come across the topic of ring species. I have tried to find concrete examples of how these work, but have been unable to. This paper deals with…
Niobius
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Is there a hypothesis that attempts to explain patterns of species richness along all three energy-related environmental gradients?

My question is related to one of the oldest question in ecology: "What determines global patterns of species richness?". However, I want to focus on one particular part of this question, which has been bothering me for a long time. Background…
Th334
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Database of Geographic Range of Species

Is there a database of organisms which would contain their queriable geographic location? I would need to perform a rather simple query, such as Animals of , where Location is some well defined geographic area such as Czech Republic or…
Jan Drábek
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Estimation of species range fragmentation

While discussing species distribution patterns along spatial, temporal or functional gradients one often finds a hump shaped species richness pattern. This is well documented in many taxa and spatial scales and known as the mid-domain-effect (e.g.…
Igel_in_aspic
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Pink growth (aka pink slime) in bathtub or shower

I was wondering if anybody had studied or was knowledgeable about the pink growth that people often find around water fixtures in their homes, especially bath tubs and showers? My understanding is that this pink growth is actually a bacteria and…
theforestecologist
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How do animals end up in remote areas?

I was thinking specifically about random marshy water holes on farmers fields. It seems that you can visit just about any one of these and you will find frogs if you look hard enough. They usually don't seem to be connected to each other. If it were…
Octopus
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Orangish-coloured insect living in wood chips

Can anyone Identify this organism? I dug it up in a pile of 5 year old wood chips in Cleveland, Tennessee, United States. It is about 4 inches long.
Scott Hegel
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(Why) are polar bears more common in Labrador than in southern Greenland?

The Labrador Sea is between Greenland, Labrador, and Qikiqtaaluk: Map source. A Greenlandic source on polar bears states: In Greenland the polar bear lives and breeds in the northernmost parts of West Greenland and in Northeast Greenland, but is…
gerrit
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Mechanism for earthworms to get into a roof gutter

While cleaning accumulated muck from a roof gutter on my house, I found a few earthworms living in the muck. I am intrigued about what mechanism may have allowed the earthworms to reach that location. Some hypotheses: Live worm crawls up a…
Craig McQueen
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Reporting observation of a bird outside its seasonal presence

Last summer I saw this bird in the countryside of Bulgaria (Dobrich area) and I think this is a specimen of Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor). By looking more in detail the distribution of that bird (I checked in few books including the Collins…
рüффп
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Aquatic forest insect identification

I found it in the forest but I've never seen anything like it so I took it home to see what it is. Does anyone know?
Beth Sorby
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How do you know which organisms are keystone species?

I know that keystone species are those that play a crucial role in an ecosystem, but since all species are interdependent upon each other and each occupy their own niche, aren't they all important? How do you know which organisms are keystone…
city7lights
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Using Canonical Correspondence Analysis on matrices with missing data

I have a matrix of sites where not all the environmental variables I want to assess were sampled. In other words, there are sites with the whole set of variables sampled, and there are other sites where just some variables were sampled. Does…
Jaqo
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Beta-diversity for data with zeros

Background I am looking into enterotyping the gut microbiome data, obtained by shotgun sequencing. This essentially means performing the Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) of the beta-diversity matrix (distance matrix), based on the abundance…
Roger Vadim
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What is a "Valid Species"?

I read in a reference book on Google Books (Biology of Termites: a Modern Synthesis, eds. Bignell, Roisin, and Lo) that the termite Heterotermes perfidus found on the South Atlantic island of St Helena is a "valid species": Gay states definitively…
user8654
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