Dr. Kirk Winemiller and doctoral students Luke Bower and Daniel Fitzgerald together with Dr. Eric Pianka (Denton Cooley Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin) recently published a paper in Ecology Letters entitled “Functional Traits, Convergent Evolution, and Periodic Tables of Niches” in which they explore implications of convergent evolution for current research that seeks to define niche dimensionality and species ordination in functional trait space. The paper also summarizes applications of species ordination for environmental challenges such as restoration ecology and invasive species.
The open access paper can be viewed at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12462/full