Organismsranging

Organismsranging, in ecology and biogeography, refers to the geographic and ecological distribution of organisms—the extent of space and variety of habitats occupied by a species or group. It encompasses the core range, peripheral populations, seasonal habitats, and transitory occurrences. Range characterization typically relies on compiled occurrence records, range maps, and estimates of the ecological niche that matches a species to environmental conditions such as temperature, precipitation, and terrain.

R ang es are dynamic. They expand or contract with climate change, disturbance, and changes in land use; species can disperse and colonize new areas or become restricted by barriers, competition, or deteriorating habitat. Fragmentation can create isolated subpopulations, while connectivity influences colonization rates. Methods to study ranges include compiling museum and citizen science observations, detecting presence with environmental DNA, and modeling distributions with geographic information systems and species distribution models that relate occurrences to environmental predictors.

Applications of studying organismsranging include conservation planning, such as identifying refugia and prioritizing habitat corridors; assessing the vulnerability of species to climate- or land-use changes; and forecasting potential invasions. Challenges include uneven sampling, biases in records, taxonomic or naming uncertainty, and aligning different spatial and temporal scales across data sources.