ecological niche

noun

, Ecology.

1. the position or function of an organism in a community of plants and animals.

ecological niche

1. The place or function of a given organism within its ecosystem .

Notes

Different organisms may compete for the same niche. For example, in a forest there may be a niche for an organism that can fly and eat nectar from blossoms. This niche may be filled by some sort of bird , or an insect, or even a mammal such as a bat.

Example Sentences

Early snakes slithered into newly vacant ecological niches and rapidly evolved the ability to go after a wide array of prey, the scientists reported on October 14 in the journal PLOS Biology.

From Popular-Science

That’s because some bats that were already resistant to rabies and weren’t spreading it are inevitably eliminated, leaving an ecological niche wide open for other, rabies-carrying bats to fill.

From FiveThirtyEight

This thick, closed canopy appeared soon after the impact, but overall forest diversity took much longer to recover, as new species began to evolve to occupy new ecological niches.

From Science News

According to a paper released in March, the hippos might actually be filling an ecological niche that’s been empty for tens of thousands of years.

From Popular-Science

Back on land, the researchers scanned the fish to examine their skeletal structures, studied the differences in their genes, and analyzed their chemical composition for clues to the ecological niche each occupied.

From Quanta Magazine