Summary: Dormann et al. (2010)

It has been suggested that closely related species share similar climate niches. To test this hypothesis, Dormann et al. (2010) used distribution data for 140 European mammal species, together with climate, land cover and topographical data (to fit species distribution models) in order to derive an estimate of the mammals realised climate niches and to investigate their degree of overlap. They compared climate niche overlap of species pairs and found that closely related species differed in their climate niches, but display high climate niche distances. Dormann et al. (2010) interpret this finding as a strong interspecific competitive constraint on the fundamental niche. Their results imply a flexibility of realised climate niches that are independent of phylogenetic distance. Furthermore, the suggest that climate niche models may not be particularly useful for the prediction of future mammal distributions.