The relationship between niche and distribution, and especially the role of biotic interactions in shaping species' geographic distributions, has gained increasing interest in the last two decades. Most ecological research has focused on negative species interactions, especially competition, predation and parasitism. Yet the relevance of positive interactions – mutualisms and commensalisms – have been brought to the fore in recent years by an increasing number of empirical studies exploring their impact on range limits. Based on a review of 73 studies from a Web of Science search, we found strong evidence that positive interactions can influence the extent of species' geographic or ecological ranges through a diversity of mechanisms. More specifically, we found that while obligate interactions, and especially obligate mutualisms, tend to constrain the ranges of one or both partners, facultative positive interactions tend to widen ranges. Nonetheless, there was more variation in effects of facultative interactions on range limits, pointing to important context-dependencies. Therefore, we propose that conceptual development in this field will come from studying ecological interactions in the context of networks of many species across environmental gradients, since pairwise interactions alone might overlook the indirect and environmentally-contingent effects that species have on each other in communities of many interacting species. Finally, our study also revealed key data gaps that limit our current understanding of the pervasiveness of effects that positive interactions have on species' ranges, highlighting potential avenues for future theoretical and experimental work.

中文翻译：

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正物种相互作用塑造物种的范围限制

生态位和分布之间的关系，特别是生物相互作用在塑造物种地理分布方面的作用，在过去的二十年里越来越受到关注。大多数生态研究都集中在负面的物种相互作用上，尤其是竞争、捕食和寄生。然而，近年来，越来越多的实证研究探索了它们对范围限制的影响，从而凸显了积极相互作用（互惠和共生）的相关性。基于对 Web of Science 搜索的 73 项研究的回顾，我们发现了强有力的证据，表明积极的相互作用可以通过多种机制影响物种的地理或生态范围的范围。更具体地说，我们发现虽然强制相互作用，尤其是强制互惠，倾向于限制一个或两个合作伙伴的范围，兼性积极互动往往会扩大范围。尽管如此，兼性相互作用对范围限制的影响存在更多差异，表明重要的上下文依赖性。因此，我们建议该领域的概念发展将来自研究跨环境梯度的许多物种网络背景下的生态相互作用，因为单独的成对相互作用可能会忽略物种在群落中相互之间的间接和环境偶然影响。许多相互作用的物种。最后，我们的研究还揭示了关键的数据差距，这些差距限制了我们目前对积极相互作用对物种范围的影响的普遍性的理解，