Ecological niche: niche width and overlap.

PPT presentation about ecological niche: niche width and overlap.

1. Ecological niche: Niche width and overlap Presented by: Bidyut changmai Pg 4 th semester Botany Madhabdev university.

2. Content: INTRODUCTION. TYPES OF ECOLOGICAL NICHES. NICHE WIDTH AND OVERLAP. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NICHE AND HABITAT. CONCLUSION.

3. Ecological Niche: An ecological niche refers to the role or function of an organism within its ecosystem, including its habitat, resource use, and interactions with other organisms. The term of Ecological niche was first coined by J. Grinnel in I917 to explain microhabitat. Thus, ecological niche of any organisms concerns not only the space, where it lives? But also what it does? (How it transform energy, behaves, respond to and modified it’s physical and biotic environment) and how it’s contained by other species.

4. Types of Niche: Following three aspects of ecological niche are generally designated as – Physical space occupied by the organisms. Functional role or trophic position. Position in the environmental gradient. On the basis of these three aspects ecological niche are three types – Spatial or Habitat Niche. Trophic Niche. Multidimensional or Hyper volume Niche.

5. Niche width and Overlap : Niche Width also known as Niche breadth. Niche breadth may refers to the width of the area. The species that utilized a broad spectrum of the environment are called habitat generalists. They usually have high niche breadth score. Some species are restricted in their distribution and live in a narrow range of environmental spectrum. They exhibits low niche breadth score. The fundamental niche width of an organism refers to the theoretical range of conditions that an organism could survive and reproduce in without considering interspecific interactions. The fundamental niche exclusively considers limiting biotic and abiotic factors such as appropriate food sources and a suitable climate.

6. Niche width and overlap: Realized niche width is a phrase relating to ecology, is defined by the actual space that an organism inhabits and the resources it can access as a result of limiting pressures from other species (e.g. superior competitors). Niche overlap is the collective utilization of resources by tow or more species in the same region . Overlap beings in interspecific competition. Organisms constantly try to minimize competition in sharing resources either by temporal or spatial variation.

7. Niche width and overlap The measures of niche breadth and overlap we will discuss are all based on the distribution of individual organisms, by species , within a set of resource states. The stable formed by using species as rows and resource states as colums will be called resource matrix.

8. Difference between niche and habitat niche A functional space occupied by an organisms in the same ecosystem. A single niche is occupied by a single species. Organisms may change their niche with time and season habitat A specific physical space occupied by an organisms (species). Same habitat may shared by many organisms. Habitat specificity is exhibited by organisms.

9. CONCLUSION: In ecology, niche width describes the spectrum of environmental factors a species can endure and the resources it consumes. Niche overlap happens when various species have comparable environmental needs or resource utilization.