Quantifying niche breadth across environmental gradients using EcoNiche
Clicks: 5
ID: 322444
2026
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This
article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score —
reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
Reader Engagement
Steady Performance
1.2
/100
5 views
0 readers
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
SteadyRanked #15 of 96 articles by views in journal of plant ecology
Most read
Least read
Bar heights use a square-root scale.
Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet mintedCreate a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.
5
SUSD
one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
Abstract Characterizing niche breadth across continuous gradients poses a significant analytical bottleneck, as the inherent collinearity among environmental drivers complicates disentangling individual niche dimensions. Here, we present EcoNiche, an open-source R package that provides a standardized and reproducible workflow for estimating taxon niche position and niche breadth under continuous, multidimensional gradients. EcoNiche integrates constrained ordination for gradient-explicit niche estimation, community-level aggregation of niche metrics, generalized additive models for one-dimensional response analysis, and comparisons with Levins’ breadth within a unified analytical framework. Using large-scale Chinese forest microbial and plant community datasets, we demonstrate that EcoNiche recovers environmentally interpretable niche structure across taxa and data types. In microbial communities, EcoNiche quantified niche breadth after accounting for a focal temperature gradient and revealed consistent temperature-related niche positioning across ordination- and GAM-based analyses. In the plant community, a nonlinear variation in niche breadth was detected along temperature gradients, yielding clearer gradient signals after aggregation to the community level. Compared with sample-based Levins’ breadth, EcoNiche-derived niche breadth was more closely aligned with continuous environmental occupancy and less sensitive to species commonness effects. Together, these results show EcoNiche as a practical and ecologically interpretable framework for gradient-explicit niche analysis in complex communities.
| Reference Key |
openalex_W7170136199
Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using
SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
|
|---|---|
| Authors | Shuotao Zhou, Kai Feng, J W Li, Q J He, Shang Wang, Si Luo, Qiulong Hu, Shaolong Wu, Ye Deng |
| Journal | journal of plant ecology |
| Year | 2026 |
| DOI |
10.1093/jpe/rtag167
|
| URL | |
| Keywords | Keywords not found |
Citations
No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.