ecological niche

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noun Ecology.

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

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Words nearby ecological niche

E. coli, ecolodge, ecological, ecological efficiency, ecological footprint, ecological niche, ecologist, ecology, ecomanagement, e-commerce, econ.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use ecological niche in a sentence

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.
After the dinosaurs, Earth became an all-you-can-eat buffet for snakes|Kate Baggaley|October 15, 2021|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.
Beware Of Humans|Maggie Koerth (maggie.koerth-baker@fivethirtyeight.com)|April 26, 2021|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.
The dinosaur-killing asteroid impact radically altered Earth’s tropical forests|Carolyn Gramling|April 1, 2021|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.
There’s no stopping this immortal jellyfish|PopSci Staff|December 9, 2020|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.
New Fish Data Reveal How Evolutionary Bursts Create Species|Elena Renken|December 1, 2020|Quanta Magazine

Cultural definitions for ecological niche

ecological niche

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

notes for ecological niche

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.