Resumen del producto

The ecological niche comprises the total physical space within which the individuals of a species survive, grow, and reproduce. The dimensions or limits defined for this space constitute an abstract concept, not only a volume in space. The niche concept is one of the most important
concepts in ecology, although it is one of the most confusing (Root, 1967). The first general idea of the niche concept was proposed by Grinell (1917), who established it as a measure of the geographic distribution of an organism, without explicitly using the term niche. With time, new proposals have arisen, but in essence, in every case the niche is considered not just as physical space, it also includes the environmental factors that can affect organisms, the means that they use to obtain food, and their relations with other organisms (e.g., competition, predation) (Elton, 1966; Whittaker and Levin, 1975; Krebs, 1985). The term niche describes not only where an organism lives but also how it lives (Townsend et al., 2008). The most accepted definition of niche was the one proposed by Hutchinson (1957), who stated that the ecological niche includes all physical and biological variables that affect the good functioning of an organism. This he called the multidimensional niche or hypervolume; this last term refers to upper and lower intervals, or thresholds of survival of the species within limiting variables. This puts in context the ways in which tolerance and requirements interact to define the conditions and needs that an individual or species have in order to live. It should be noted that different organisms have different tolerances to limiting conditions (e.g., temperature, pH, relative humidity, wind velocity, water flow, etc.), as well as different needs for several resources (e.g., water, nutrients, food, etc.), so that the niche concept is without doubt multidimensional. It has been proposed that the fundamental niche of a species can change slowly under natural selection. Models have been developed that, along with population dynamics and genetics in heterogeneous environments, have resulted in predicting that the rate of adaptation of the fundamental niche would often be slower than the process of extinction

Palabras clave: Hutchinsonian niche; Ecological Niche

Para obtener una copia del documento contacta la personal de la biblioteca a través del correo bibliocicimar{a}ipn.mx