18 Facts About Ecological niche

In ecology, a Ecological niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.

Grinnellian Ecological niche is determined by the habitat in which a species lives and its accompanying behavioral adaptations.

The Hutchinsonian Ecological niche uses mathematics and statistics to try to explain how species coexist within a given community.

Concept of ecological niche is central to ecological biogeography, which focuses on spatial patterns of ecological communities.

Ecological meaning of niche comes from the meaning of niche as a recess in a wall for a statue, which itself is probably derived from the Middle French word nicher, meaning to nest.

In other words, the Ecological niche is the sum of the habitat requirements and behaviors that allow a species to persist and produce offspring.

Variables of interest in this Ecological niche class include average temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and terrain aspect which have become increasingly accessible across spatial scales.

Instance there is the Ecological niche that is filled by birds of prey which eat small animals such as shrews and mice.

Conceptually, the Eltonian Ecological niche introduces the idea of a species' response to and effect on the environment.

Hutchinsonian Ecological niche is an "n-dimensional hypervolume", where the dimensions are environmental conditions and resources, that define the requirements of an individual or a species to practice its way of life, more particularly, for its population to persist.

For such a bell-shaped distribution, the position, width and form of the Ecological niche correspond to the mean, standard deviation and the actual distribution itself.

One advantage in using statistics is illustrated in the figure, where it is clear that for the narrower distributions there is no competition for prey between the extreme left and extreme right species, while for the broader distribution, Ecological niche overlap indicates competition can occur between all species.

Once a Ecological niche is left vacant, other organisms can fill that position.

The Ecological niche that was left vacant by the extinction of the tarpan has been filled by other animals .

Therefore, the impact Ecological niche is equivalent to the Eltonian Ecological niche since both concepts are defined by the impact of a given species on its environment.

Contemporary Ecological niche theory provides three requirements that must be met in order for two species to coexist:.

Additionally, contemporary Ecological niche theory predicts that species will be unable to establish in environments where other species already consume resources in the same ways as the incoming species, however examples of this are numerous.

The parameters of a realized Ecological niche are described by the realized Ecological niche width of that species.