3 Dispersal, evolution and range dynamics – a synthesis

Th e distribution of species in space and time is one of the oldest puzzles in ecology. Already Charles Darwin pointed this out over 150 years ago, when he asked: “ Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? ” (Darwin 1859). And yet, although much time has passed since 1859 and ecology has experienced an impor-tant transition from Natural History to theory based research, we still do not comprehensively understand the for-mation of geographic ranges for any given species (Gaston 2009). Nevertheless, a lot of eff ort has been invested into clarifying mechanisms and processes, which aff ect the for-mation of species ’ ranges (Geber 2011). Yet, we feel that important advances in this fi eld have been hampered by the lack of a common framework, especially since rang