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Hutchinsonian niche

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The shape of the bill of this Purple-throated Carib is complementary to the shape of the flower, enabling it to exploit the nectar as a resource

The Hutchinsonian niche is an n-dimensional hypervolume, where the dimensions are environmental conditions and resources, that define the requirements of an individual or a species to practice "its" way of life, more particularly, for its population to persist.[1] The "hypervolume" defines the multi-dimensional space of resources (e.g., light, nutrients, structure, etc.) available to (and specifically used by) organisms, and "all species other than those under consideration are regarded as part of the coordinate system."[2]

The niche concept was popularized by the zoologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1957.[2] Hutchinson wanted to know why there are so many types of organisms in any one habitat. His work inspired many others to develop models to explain how many and how similar coexisting species could be within a given community, and led to the concepts of 'niche breadth' (the variety of resources or habitats used by a given species), 'niche partitioning' (resource differentiation by coexisting species), and 'niche overlap' (overlap of resource use by different species).[3]

Where three species eat some of the same prey, a statistical picture of each niche shows overlap in resource usage between three species, indicating where competition is strongest

Statistics were introduced into the Hutchinson niche by Robert MacArthur and Richard Levins using the 'resource-utilization' niche employing histograms to describe the 'frequency of occurrence' as a function of a Hutchinson coordinate.[1][4] So, for instance, a Gaussian might describe the frequency with which a species ate prey of a certain size, giving a more detailed niche description than simply specifying some median or average prey size. For such a bell-shaped distribution, the position, width and form of the niche correspond to the mean, standard deviation and the actual distribution itself.[5]. One advantage in using statistics is illustrated in the figure, where it is clear that for the narrower distributions (top) there is no competition for prey between the extreme left and extreme right species, while for the broader distribution (bottom), niche overlap indicates competition can occur between all species. The resource-utilization approach consists in postulating that not only competition can occur, but also that it does occur, and that overlap in resource utilization directly enables to estimate the competition coefficients. [6] This postulate, however, can be misguided, as it ignores the impacts that the resources of each category have on the organism and the impacts that the organism has on the resources of each category. For instance, the resource in the overlap region can be non-limiting, in which case there will be no competition despite niche overlap (this difficulty is discussed at length in [6] [3] and [7]).

An organism free of interference from other species could use the full range of conditions (biotic and abiotic) and resources in which it could survive and reproduce which is called its fundamental niche.[8] However, as a result of pressure from, and interactions with, other organisms (i.e. inter-specific competition) species are usually forced to occupy a niche that is narrower than this, and to which they are mostly highly adapted. This is termed the realized niche.[8] Hutchinson used the idea of competition for resources as the primary mechanism driving ecology, but overemphasis upon this focus has proved to be a handicap for the niche concept.[3] In particular, overemphasis upon a species' dependence upon resources has led to too little emphasis upon the effects of organisms on their environment, for instance, colonization and invasions.[3]

The term adaptive zone was coined by the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson to explain how a population could jump from one niche to another that suited it, jump to an 'adaptive zone', made available by virtue of some modification, or possibly a change in the food chain, that made the adaptive zone available to it without a discontinuity in its way of life because the group was 'pre-adapted' to the new ecological opportunity.[9]

As a hemi-parasitic plant, the mistletoe in this tree exploits its host for nutrients and as a place to grow.

Hutchinson's "niche" (a description of the ecological space occupied by a species) is subtly different from the "niche" as defined by Grinnell (an ecological role, that may or may not be actually filled by a species—see vacant niches).

A niche is a very specific segment of ecospace occupied by a single species. On the presumption that no two species are identical in all respects (called Hardin's 'axiom of inequality'[10]) and the competitive exclusion principle, some resource or adaptive dimension will provide a niche specific to each species.[8] Species can however share a 'mode of life' or 'autecological strategy' which are broader definitions of ecospace.[11] For example, Australian grasslands species, though different from those of the Great Plains grasslands, exhibit similar modes of life.[12]

Once a niche is left vacant, other organisms can fill that position. For example, the niche that was left vacant by the extinction of the tarpan has been filled by other animals (in particular a small horse breed, the konik). Also, when plants and animals are introduced into a new environment, they have the potential to occupy or invade the niche or niches of native organisms, often outcompeting the indigenous species. Introduction of non-indigenous species to non-native habitats by humans often results in biological pollution by the exotic or invasive species.

The mathematical representation of a species' fundamental niche in ecological space, and its subsequent projection back into geographic space, is the domain of niche modelling.[13]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Levin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Hutchinson, G.E. (1957). "Concluding remarks" (PDF). Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. 22 (2): 415–427. doi:10.1101/sqb.1957.022.01.039. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
  3. ^ a b c d Jonathan M. Chase, Mathew A. Leibold (2003). Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches. University of Chicago Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780226101804.
  4. ^ Robert H. MacArthur (1958). "Population ecology of some warblers of northeastern coniferous forests" (PDF). Ecology. 39 (4): 599–619. doi:10.2307/1931600.
  5. ^ Rory Putman, Stephen D. Wratten (1984). "§5.2 Parameters of the niche". Principles of ecology. University of California Press. p. 107. ISBN 9780520052543.
  6. ^ a b Schoener, Thomas W. (1986). "The Ecological Niche". In Cherret, J. M. (ed.). Ecological concepts: the contribution of ecology to an understanding of the natural world. Cambridge: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Pocheville2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ a b c James R Griesemer (1994). "Niche: Historical perspectives". Keywords in Evolutionary Biology. Harvard University Press. p. 239. ISBN 9780674503137. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ Dolph Schluter (2000). "§4.2: The ecological theory". The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation. Oxford University Press. p. 69. ISBN 9780191588327. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |chaptertitle= ignored (help)
  10. ^ Garrett Hardin (1960). "The competitive exclusion principle" (PDF). Science. 131 (3409): 1292–1297. doi:10.1126/science.131.3409.1292. PMID 14399717.
  11. ^ Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. and Ferry, P.A. (2010). "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land" (PDF). Biology Letters. 6 (4): 544–547. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024. PMC 2936204. PMID 20106856.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ Glossary for the Nature of Alberta
  13. ^ On the logic of the relation between the niche and the corresponding geographic environment see Barry Smith and Achille Varzi, "The Niche", Nous, 33:2 (1999), 198–222.
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