Habitats and Niches

Kat de Dios
Let’s Dive Right In...
Habitats

A habitat or biome is an
environment in which plants
and animals live. Habitat is
dictated by what types of plants
grow there, the climate and the
geography.
Beech Wood
Broadleaf Forest
Coniferous Forest
Coastal Urban Desert Farmland

Terrestrial
Habitats
Hedgerows Mangroves
Mountains Parkland
Taiga Rainforest Tundra
Oakwood
Lakes and Ponds
Swamp Bog Marsh

Freshwater
Habitats
Brackish Water Wetlands

Temporary Pools
 Shallow Seas
Hydrothermal Vents
Rockpools Estuaries

Marine
Habitats
Reefs Intertidal Zones
Deep Ocean
Sea Bed

Check out:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3039945/Diving-abyss-Stomach-churning-video-shows-freediver-ex
ploring-world-s-second-deepest-underwater-sink-hole.html
http://twistedsifter.com/videos/ocean-gravity-by-julie-gautier-guillaume-nery/
Ecological Niche

A niche refers to the way in which an

organism fits into an ecological community
or ecosystem. Through the process of
natural selection, a niche is the
evolutionary result of a species’
morphological (morphology refers to an
organism’s physical structure),
physiological, and behavioral adaptations
to its surroundings.
Two Niche Concepts

Place Niche
This niche was proposed by
Joseph Grinell. It is
geographically oriented. Grinell
defined “niche” as the “ultimate
(distributional) unit, occupied by
just one species or subspecies”.
This explores which factors
govern a species’ potential
geographical distribution and
usually is considered to be
physical or climactic factors.
The upper line depicts the range of prey sizes used
by the species compared to the total size range
available, shown on the lower line. Such a
one-dimensional graph is called a niche axis and
represents quantitatively how a species uses one of
the factors of its habitat. The range of resources
utilized along the axis is referred to as niche
breadth. A species with wide niche breadth is
referred to as a generalist; a species with narrow
niche breadth is called a specialist.
Food is not the only factor that we can graph this
way. In the second graph we add a second axis
to indicate the temperature extremes that our
hypothetical species can tolerate. Note that this
results in a shaded area on the graph indicating
the combinations of prey size and temperature
that allow the species to exist. It would now be
possible to add a third factor such as moisture to
our graph making it three-dimensional. The
shaded area in the second graph would become
a rectangular solid and would represent the
combinations of prey size, temperature, and
moisture that allow our species to survive.
Functional Niche

This niche was created by Charles

Elton and G.F. Gause. Their idea was
defined on behavioral considerations.
NICHE
Ecologists were relatively happy accepting these views of the
niche until the late 1950s when the eminent limnologist and
ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson devised a rigorous and
quantitative concept of niche that, with slight modifications
from his original concept, incorporated both place and
functional elements and has remained the standard niche
model for over thirty years. Prior to Hutchinson the niche was
a rather nebulous concept defined only by words; that is,
niches could not be measured. Hutchinson’s new idea not only
allowed a way to measure niches but also a way to compare
niches of two or more species.

An animal that preys upon other animals will be limited in the

range of prey sizes that it can kill. Certain prey will simply be
too large to kill; others will be too small to bother with because
the amount of energy needed to catch them is greater than the
amount of energy to be gained by eating them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/habitats
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3039945/Diving-abyss-Stomach-churning-video-shows-freediver-ex
ploring-world-s-second-deepest-underwater-sink-hole.html
http://twistedsifter.com/videos/ocean-gravity-by-julie-gautier-guillaume-nery/
http://marinebio.org/oceans/conservation/moyle/ch7/