ecoclinen.

1929 F. E. Clements et al. Plant Competition 189 The valleys, bluffs and the ecoclines of the hills afford so much diversity with respect to water relations especially that an unusual series of communities is available for study.

1974 Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 103 99 The response of vegetation on Sucia Island to a number of sharp environmental gradients produces an ecocline with five major plant communities.

2003 R. L. Thayer Lifeplace i. 15 It is what might be called an ‘ecocline’, where the annual rainfall grades from a high of seventy-five inches at Mount Shasta to a desertlike six inches in the Kern Basin.

1939 J. S. Huxley in Jrnl. Ecol. 27 416 Geographical subspeciation appears to be much commoner in animals than in plants, while ecoclines on the other hand seem to be less frequent in animals.

1963 Watsonia 5 318 In Alchemilla filicaulis..the evidence so far obtained suggests a parallel with the ecoclines found in P. maritima.

2001 N. Maxted & S. J. Bennett Plant Genetic Res. of Legumes in Mediterranean xii. 212 The traditionally used morphological characters showed a continuous variation with elevation, and suggested that the L. corniculatus complex in Turkey may be simply an altitudinally-based ecocline.

1944 Amer. Naturalist 78 560 ‘Ecoclinal subspecies’, with objectively delimited ranges, should be recognized nomenclatorially on the subspecies level.

1998 Appl. Vegetation Sci. 1 71/1 A few geographically restricted..rare species..may maintain gene-flow and continuous ecoclinal variation and local adaptation.