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Ecological niche. Appearance. 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 ...
Niche construction. Beavers hold a very specific biological niche in the ecosystem: constructing dams across river systems. 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 ...
e. An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system that environments and their organisms form through their interaction. [2]: 458 The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which ...
Competition (biology) Competition is an interaction between organisms or species in which both require a resource that is in limited supply (such as food, water, or territory). [1] Competition lowers the fitness of both organisms involved since the presence of one of the organisms always reduces the amount of the resource available to the other.
Ecosystem diversity addresses the combined characteristics of biotic properties (biodiversity) and abiotic properties (geodiversity). It is a variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the whole planet. Ecological diversity includes the variation in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
For example, a slight modification of the assumption of how growth and body size are related leads to a different conclusion, namely that, for a given ecosystem, a certain range of species may coexist while others become outcompeted. [10] [11] One of the primary ways niche-sharing species can coexist is the competition-colonization trade-off ...
Vacant niche. The issue of what exactly defines a vacant niche, also known as empty niche, and whether they exist in ecosystems is controversial. The subject is intimately tied into a much broader debate on whether ecosystems can reach equilibrium, where they could theoretically become maximally saturated with species.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home ...