In the recent past, availability of large data sets of species presences has increased by
orders of magnitude. This, together with developments in geographical information systems
and statistical methods, has enabled scientists to calculate, for thousands of species, the
environmental conditions of their distributional areas. The profiles thus obtained are
obviously related to niche concepts in the Grinnell tradition, and separated from those in
Elton's tradition. I argue that it is useful to define Grinnellian and Eltonian niches on the basis …