Where it lives, and how it lives: A niche is the whole way a species lives. Its habitat is only the place.
The points to remember
- A niche is the set of abiotic and biotic conditions and resources a species depends on.
- It is the species' role in the ecosystem: all its interactions with living and non-living things.
- It covers everything that affects its growth, survival and reproduction, including how it gets food.
- A habitat is only where it lives.
- Many species share a habitat, but each species has its own niche.
Remember it as: Habitat: where it lives. Niche: how it lives there.
Habitat
- The place, or kind of environment.
- Shared by many species.
Niche
- All its conditions, resources and interactions.
- Particular to one species.
Real example: robins and blue tits share the same habitat, a UK garden. But robins feed on worms and insects on the ground, while blue tits pick tiny insects off twigs: different niches.
Write 'role', not 'job': Describe a niche as the species' role or all its interactions. 'Its job' is not accepted.
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To describe a niche, list its parameters for one named species.
The parameters of a niche
- Conditions: the range of temperature, pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen or sunlight it can live in.
- Food: what it eats and how it gets it (hunting, grazing, filtering, diving).
- Resources: water, nest sites, shelter, space.
- Interactions: its predators, prey, competitors, parasites and partners.
- Timing: when it is active (day or night) and when it breeds.
- Disturbance: how much disturbance it can stand.
Remember it as: Conditions, food, resources, other species, timing.
Reading it: the puffin depends on cold seas with plenty of sand eels, and on soft soil for its burrows. Take away either, and it cannot breed there.
Name the species: A niche answer with no named species cannot get full marks. Each condition must fit that species.
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Papers give fact files of two species and ask you to compare their niches, or to explain a change.
Comparing niches, and niches that change
- To compare niches, give a similarity ('both ...') and a difference ('..., whereas ...').
- Different niches let species share a habitat, so more niches means more species can live there.
- A niche shrinks when a competitor, predator or disease arrives, or when food or nest sites are lost.
- A niche can also change when conditions change, e.g. warmer water.
- Species with a broad niche (varied food, many places to live) recover faster after a disaster.
Remember it as: Both ... whereas ... : one of each.
Comparing: both nest in tree holes and feed by day, whereas blue tits feed high on tiny insects and great tits feed lower, on larger food.
Real example: a niche that shrank: In many English rivers, invasive American signal crayfish take the best hiding places under stones and carry a disease, crayfish plague. The native white-clawed crayfish now survives mainly in streams the invaders have not reached.
How this comes up: Paper 2, Section B (a): distinguish niche and habitat, or outline four conditions of a named species' niche [4]. Paper 1: compare two species' niches from a fact file [3].
A nature guide says that red foxes 'live everywhere' in British towns.
Distinguish between the terms niche and habitat with reference to a named species.
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