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A species' realized niche is usually much narrower than its fundamental niche width as it is forced to adjust its niche around the superior competing species. The physical area where a species lives, is its habitat. The set of environmental features essential to that species' survival, is its "niche." (Ecology. Begon, Harper, Townsend)
Hutchinson's "niche" (a description of the ecological space occupied by a species) is subtly different from the "niche" as defined by Grinnell (an ecological role, that may or may not be actually filled by a species—see vacant niches). A niche is a very specific segment of ecospace occupied by a single species.
The evolutionary biologist Dolph Schluter defines it as "the evolution of reproductive isolation between populations or subsets of a single population by adaptation to different environments or ecological niches", [3] while others believe natural selection is the driving force.
Spatial ecology studies the ultimate distributional or spatial unit occupied by a species.In a particular habitat shared by several species, each of the species is usually confined to its own microhabitat or spatial niche because two species in the same general territory cannot usually occupy the same ecological niche for any significant length of time.
The Hutchinsonian niche framework, on the other hand, directly precludes the possibility of there being vacant niches. Hutchinson defined the niche as an n-dimensional hyper-volume whose dimensions correspond to resource gradients over which species are distributed in a unimodal fashion.
Niche construction is the ecological process by which an organism alters its own (or another species') local environment. These alterations can be a physical change to the organism’s environment, or it can encompass the active movement of an organism from one habitat to another where it then experiences different environmental pressures.
Character displacement occurs when similar species that live in the same geographical region and occupy similar niches differentiate in order to minimize niche overlap and avoid competitive exclusion. Several species of Galapagos finches display character displacement. Each closely related species differs in beak size and beak depth, allowing ...
A niche must be available in order for a new species to be successful. Ring species such as Larus gulls have been claimed to illustrate speciation in progress, though the situation may be more complex. [36] The grass Anthoxanthum odoratum may be starting parapatric speciation in areas of mine contamination. [37]
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