What is a Habitat? – Definition of Habitat
“A habitat is a place or area where a species grows, lives or thrives.”

Temperature, sunlight, rainfall, types of soil, etc. and other abiotic factors determine the presence of organisms in an area. These factors prevailing in an area determine the best-suited species for that environment.

Habitat is the best-suited condition for a species and provides ideal conditions for a species to grow, adapt, reproduce and flourish.

It is the energy or nutrient-providing area for an organism. The habitat of a species describes the totality of abiotic factors to which the species is exposed in the area.

Examples of habitats include deserts, ponds, freshwater lakes, oceans, mountains, grassland, forest, etc.

What is a Niche? – Definition of Niche
“Niche is defined as a functional role played by an organism in its ecosystem.”

Joseph Grinnel coined the term “Niche”. He described a niche as the distributional unit specific to each species. He emphasised that no two species living in the same territory can occupy the same ecological niche for long.

The ecological niche not only involves the physical space occupied by an organism but also describes the functional role or place of a species in its community structure. This includes everything related to how it influences a community, i.e. what it eats, where it lives, what it does, the trophic position occupied, etc. Niche describes how a species contributes to the system’s energy flow and how it gains energy and supplies it further in an ecosystem.



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