Fit of a species living under specific environmental conditions
The flightless dung beetle occupies an ecological niche: exploiting animal droppings as a food source.
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.[1][2] It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for example, by growing when resources are abundant, and when predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce) and how it in turn alters those same factors (for example, limiting access to resources by other organisms, acting as a food source for predators and a consumer of prey). "The type and number of variables comprising the dimensions of an environmental niche vary from one species to another [and] the relative importance of particular environmental variables for a species may vary according to the geographic and biotic contexts".[3]
A Grinnellian niche is determined by the habitat in which a species lives and its accompanying behavioral adaptations. An Eltonian niche emphasizes that a species not only grows in and responds to an environment, it may also change the environment and its behavior as it grows. The Hutchinsonian niche uses mathematics and statistics to try to explain how species coexist within a given community.
The concept of ecological niche is central to ecological biogeography, which focuses on spatial patterns of ecological communities.[4] "Species distributions and their dynamics over time result from properties of the species, environmental variation..., and interactions between the two—in particular the abilities of some species, especially our own, to modify their environments and alter the range dynamics of many other species."[5] Alteration of an ecological niche by its inhabitants is the topic of niche construction.[6]
The majority of species exist in a standard ecological niche, sharing behaviors, adaptations, and functional traits similar to the other closely related species within the same broad taxonomic class, but there are exceptions. A premier example of a non-standard niche filling species is the flightless, ground-dwelling kiwi bird of New Zealand, which feeds on worms and other ground creatures, and lives its life in a mammal-like niche. Island biogeography can help explain island species and associated unfilled niches.
^Pocheville, Arnaud (2015). "The Ecological Niche: History and Recent Controversies". In Heams, Thomas; Huneman, Philippe; Lecointre, Guillaume; et al. (eds.). Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 547–586. ISBN 978-94-017-9014-7.
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Three variants of ecological niche are described by Thomas W. Schoener (2009). "§I.1 Ecological niche". In Simon A. Levin; Stephen R. Carpenter; H. Charles J. Godfray; Ann P. Kinzig; Michel Loreau; Jonathan B. Losos; Brian Walker; David S. Wilcove (eds.). The Princeton Guide to Ecology. Princeton University Press. pp. 3 ff. ISBN 9781400833023.
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A Townsend Peterson; Jorge Soberôn; RG Pearson; Roger P Anderson; Enrique Martínez-Meyer; Miguel Nakamura; Miguel Bastos Araújo (2011). "Species-environment relationships". Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49). Princeton University Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780691136882. See also Chapter 2: Concepts of niches, pp. 7 ff
^Mark V Lomolino; Brett R Riddle; James H Brown (2009). "The geographic range as a reflection of the niche". Biogeography (3rd ed.). Sunderland, Mass: Sinauer Associates. p. 73. ISBN 978-0878934867. The geographic range of a species can be viewed as a spatial reflection of its niche Viewable on line via Amazon's 'look-inside' feature.
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Mark V Lomolino; Brett R Riddle; James H Brown (2009). "Areography: Sizes, shapes and overlap of ranges". Biogeography (3rd ed.). Sunderland, Mass: Sinauer Associates. p. 579. ISBN 978-0878934867. Viewable on line via Amazon's 'look-inside' feature.
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A Townsend Peterson; Jorge Soberôn; RG Pearson; Roger P Anderson; Enrique Martínez-Meyer; Miguel Nakamura; Miguel Bastos Araújo (2011). "Major themes in niche concepts". Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49). Princeton University Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780691136882. We will make the crucial distinction between variables that are dynamically modified (linked) by the presence of the species versus those that are not. ... [Our construction] is based upon variables not dynamically affected by the species...in contrast to...those that are subject to modification by niche construction.
Hutchinsonian niche uses mathematics and statistics to try to explain how species coexist within a given community. The concept of ecologicalniche is central...
": 519 The ecologicalniche is a central concept in the ecology of organisms and is sub-divided into the fundamental and the realized niche. The fundamental...
Ontogenetic niche shift (abbreviated ONS) is an ecological phenomenon where an organism (usually an animal) changes its diet or habitat during its ontogeny...
Species distribution modelling (SDM), also known as environmental (or ecological) niche modelling (ENM), habitat modelling, predictive habitat distribution...
competitor or to an evolutionary or behavioral shift toward a different ecologicalniche. The principle has been paraphrased in the maxim "complete competitors...
macroevolutionary and ecological consequences. Microbialites represent ancient niches constructed by bacterial communities which give evidence that niche construction...
context of child development Ecologicalniche, a term describing the relational position of an organism's species Niche differentiation, in ecology, the...
An ecological pyramid (also trophic pyramid, Eltonian pyramid, energy pyramid, or sometimes food pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show...
Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-20833-4. Schoener, Thomas W. (2009). "EcologicalNiche". In Simon A. Levin (ed.). The Princeton Guide to Ecology. Princeton:...
resources but by the amount of time (i.e. temporal division of the ecologicalniche). Hawks and owls can hunt the same field or meadow for the same rodents...
A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecologicalniche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different...
including the number of different niches, the number of and other ecological processes. An example of ecological diversity on a global scale would be...
2017-11-17. Retrieved 2018-10-04. Pocheville, Arnaud (2015). "The EcologicalNiche: History and Recent Controversies". In Heams, Thomas; Huneman, Philippe;...
species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour, or ecologicalniche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies...
environment two competing species must differ in their respective ecologicalniche; without differentiation, one species will eliminate or exclude the...
effect. Humans are thought to be the most dramatic ecosystem engineers. Niche construction has been prevalent since the earliest days of human activity...
the needs of their metabolisms and have evolved to fill a specific ecologicalniche within specific geographical contexts. Omnivorous humans are highly...
extinction. On the other hand, a species with a highly specialized ecologicalniche is more effective at competing with other organisms.[citation needed]...
environments or ecologicalniches", while others believe natural selection is the driving force. The key difference between ecological speciation and other...
exhibits distinct adaptations and behaviors suited to its particular ecologicalniche. Marsupials constitute a clade stemming from the last common ancestor...
organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecologicalniche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive...
microhabitat or spatial niche because two species in the same general territory cannot usually occupy the same ecologicalniche for any significant length...
pressures from other species (e.g. superior competitors). An organism's ecologicalniche is determined by the biotic and abiotic factors that make up that specific...
Ecological traps are scenarios in which rapid environmental change leads organisms to prefer to settle in poor-quality habitats. The concept stems from...
Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed...
closely resembles the antelopes of the Old World and fills a similar ecologicalniche due to parallel evolution. It is the only surviving member of the family...
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