Niall McGinty

Feb 20, 2025 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Andrew Irwin |Niall McGinty

1 Introduction Niche conservatism is the tendency for closely related species and clades to retain their ecological niche and traits over time (Wiens et al. 2010). A species' ecological niche is expected to change slowly so that species retain their ancestral traits (Wiens and Graham 2005; Wiens et al. 2010) remaining constant over thousands of years across a range of environments (Peterson 2011).