Strip Range

Strip Range 

a comparatively narrow and very long region in which animals and plants occur naturally. It is generally occupied by species of a usually narrow littoral zone (to a depth of 200 m). It is sometimes characteristic not only of species but of entire biocenoses. A particularly narrow strip range is called a linear range. Thus, the ranges of many supralittoral species— for example, barnacles that “grow over” the rocky Atlantic coasts of Scandinavia—are several dozen meters wide and hundreds or even thousands of kilometers long.

Strip ranges are characteristic of some river species that dwell in rivers without tributaries or of species that do not penetrate into the tributaries (some Amu Darya and Syr Darya scapho-pods and certain Nile fishes). Strip ranges are fairly uncommon among terrestrial animals (for example, land rats live along river valleys in Central Asia), but are characteristic of certain coastal waterfowl (for example, eider ducks and some sandpipers).