The Concept of the Niche

Abstract

From considerations of the operation of the community as a whole we move to examine the position of the individual within the community: its niche. The term, as we have already noted, means more than just the ‘address’ of a particular organism (when, after all, the word ‘niche’ would merely become synonymous with ‘habitat’) but also its ‘profession’ (Elton, 1927): the position it occupies within the community, the various interrelationships it has with other organisms around it, the role it plays in the operation of the community as a whole. Although the concept is intuitively a useful one — and indeed an easy one — more rigorous definition of what is meant by a ‘niche’ is surprisingly difficult. The term as we wish to define it embraces not only the organism’s community-type, habitat and physical requirements, but includes some element of its relationship with all other components of the community, of its own role in the dynamics of the community — almost every facet of its population dynamics, periods of increase and decrease, factors controlling its numbers and distribution, almost every element of its interaction with other parts of the community, feeding relationships, relationships as prey, competitive interactions and so on (Odum, 1959). In fact, niche as a concept embraces almost the whole ecological functioning of a particular organism within its community.