Being one of the sections of ecology, synecology studies the relationships between individuals of populations of various species and their adaptability to environmental conditions. Environmentalists have found that organisms in living communities are attached to specific spatial coordinates in which they interact with each other and parts of the biosphere: water, soil, atmosphere.
This place in biogeocenoses has a name - an ecological niche. The examples considered in our article are designed to prove that it is inherent in each biological species and is a consequence of the interaction of the body with other individuals and environmental factors.
Ecological characteristic of the species
Without exception, all biological species in the process of phylogenesis adapt to specific abiotic factors. They limit the habitat of the population. The way the community of organisms interacts with living conditions and with other populations makes up its ecological characteristic, whose name is an ecological niche. Examples of animals whose life cycle occurs in different spatial and trophic sites of biogeocenosis are dragonflies of the Arthropod type, Insects class. Adult individuals - adults, being active predators, have mastered the air shell, while their larvae - mollusks breathing with gills, are hydrobionts.
Characteristics of ecological niche species
The author of the classic work “Fundamentals of Ecology”, Yu. Odum, proposed the term “ecological niche”, which he uses to study the biotic relationships of the population at all levels of its organization. According to the scientist, the position of the individual in wildlife, that is, its status in life, is an ecological niche. An example illustrating this definition is a community of plants called pioneers. They have special physiological and vegetative properties that allow them to easily conquer free territories. These include terrestrial reed, wheat grass creeping, white gauze. They form primary biocenoses that change over time. Odum called the place of the organism in nature its address, and the way of life - a profession.
J. Hutchinson Model
Let us again turn to the definition of the term “ecological niche”. An example illustrating it is a white-tailed deer, whose life cycle is associated with a subsystem space - thickets of perennial shrubs. They serve the animal not only as a source of nutrition, but also as a defense. The model of hypervolume of the biogeocenosis plot created by Hutchinson is the life support cell of an individual population. Organisms can live in it for a long time, avoiding the limiting environmental factors . The scientist’s research, based on the created mathematical model, gives an idea of ​​the optimal boundaries of the existence of communities of living organisms in ecosystems.
Gause principle
It is also called the competitive exclusion rule and is used to describe two forms of struggle for existence - intraspecific and interspecific, studied back in the 19th century by C. Darwin. If populations have overlapping needs, for example trophic (i.e., a common food supply) or spatial (overlapping habitats - ranges), on which their number depends, then the coexistence of such communities is limited. This in the end result will lead to the expulsion (crowding out of the less adapted population) and the resettlement of more adapted and rapidly multiplying organisms of another species.
For example, individuals of the species Gray Rat gradually replaced populations of the black rat. They are currently small in number and live near water bodies. Three parameters characterize the concept of “ecological niche”. An example explaining this statement was considered by us earlier, namely: the species The gray rat is spread everywhere (spatial distribution), it is omnivorous (food ration) and hunts both day and night (separation of activity in time).
Another example characterizing the rule of competitive exclusion: the first settlers who came to Australia brought European bee populations with them. In connection with the development of beekeeping, the number of these insects increased sharply, and they gradually replaced the native Australian bee from the areas of its permanent habitat, which put this species on the brink of extinction.
A similar case occurred with populations of domestic rabbit introduced by the same discoverers of the continents. The abundance of food, excellent climatic conditions and the lack of competition led to the fact that individuals of this species began to capture the habitats of other populations and multiplied in such numbers that they began to exterminate crops.
The place of the species in the ecosystem
We will continue to answer the question of what is an ecological niche. An example that gives the most complete answer is the life status of a meadow clover plant. Its distribution area is Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia. The populations grow optimally in fairly humid meadows, at temperatures of +12 ... + 21 ° C. They form perennial forbs or forest litter and are producers in the biogeocenosis food chains.
The doctrine of the ecological niche
It includes an idea of ​​the multidimensionality of a portion of an ecosystem’s space, which has certain parameters of abiotic factors and provides various forms of interaction of a population with individuals of other species: competition, parasitism, commensalism, etc. The above-mentioned characteristics of biogeocenosis provide a fairly complete description of the ecological niche of an organism. Examples of the vital activity of animals belonging to the family of rodents (ground squirrels, gerbils, jerboas) occupying the ranges of steppes and semi-deserts are adapted to a sharp fluctuation in day and night temperatures. Feeding on sparse vegetation, they themselves serve as food for large animals and birds: foxes, eagles, peregrine falcons, and owls.
Optimal and real life space of a population
Recall that the totality of the relationships of organisms with individuals of other populations and with environmental conditions is an ecological niche. An example of soil bacteria-saprotrophs, feeding on dead organics and cleansing the earth, as well as improving its agrochemical properties, confirms the formation of a large number of biotic connections with other soil inhabitants: insect larvae, plant roots, mushrooms. The vital activity of soil bacteria directly depends on the temperature and humidity of the soil, its physico-chemical composition.
Other inhabitants - nitrifying chemotroph bacteria - form stable biotic bonds with populations of legumes of the legume family: alfalfa, sowing vetch, and lupine. All of these parameters, both biotic and environmental conditions, make up the realized ecological niche of bacteria. It is part of a potential (fundamental niche) biogeocenosis, which is a complex of optimal conditions in which a species could exist indefinitely.
Rules for the mandatory filling of a multidimensional ecosystem section
If a biogeocenosis has undergone a sharp impact of extreme abiotic phenomena, for example, fires, floods, earthquakes or negative human activities, some of its areas become free, that is, deprived of the previously inhabited populations of plants and animals. The emergence of new life forms - succession - leads to a change in that part of the biogeocenosis, whose name is the ecological niche of plants. Examples of its settlement after the fire indicate that one-year-old herbaceous plants with high vegetative energy replace the broad-leaved forest: fireweed, Ivan-tea, coltsfoot and others, that is, the freed part of the space is immediately populated by populations of new species.
In this article, we have studied in detail such a concept as the ecological niche of the body. The examples considered by us confirm that it is a multidimensional complex adapted for optimal living conditions of plant and animal populations.