Ecological relations among space, time and thermal niche axes.

Characteristics of the thermal environment that an animal experiences within its home range have been incorporated into measures to quantify the quality of the home range with respect to temperature relations, to evaluate the importance of thermal transients to an animal, and to assess temporal aspects of habitat exploitation. Since the thermal environment is physiologically important to animals, and since there can be competition for space and time, this approach provides a bridge between physiological and population/evolutionary ecology. -from Authors