Cline (biology)

Cline (biology)

In biology and ecology, an ecocline or simply cline (Greek: κλίνω = to possess or exhibit gradient, to lean) describes an ecotone in which a series of biocommunities display a continuous gradient. The term was coined by the English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1938.

More technically, clines consist of ecotypes or forms of species that exhibit gradual phenotypic and/or genetic differences over a geographical area, typically as a result of environmental heterogeneity. Genetically, clines result from the change of allele frequencies within the gene pool of the group of taxa in question. Clines may manifest in time and/or space.