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 cology is awash with terms such as 'habitat',
'microhabitat', 'ecosystem' and 'niche'. While we usually have an intuitive understanding
of what they mean, it can sometimes be less simple to define them exactly.
The term 'habitat' refers to a location occupied by a species or a community of species,
such as a woodland. A habitat equates to an 'address', whereas an ecosystem
encompasses all the things which affect a particular habitat. This includes everything
from the plants and animals in the habitat, to the climate and the soil. Within a
particular ecosystem, different species will occupy different 'niches'. This basically
equates to their occupation, for example, their position within the food web in the
ecosystem.
When two species occupy the same general habitat but live in slightly different places
within it, they are said to be in different microhabitats (the house number in the
address, if you like). For example, different species of millipedes living on a woodland
floor actually live in seven or more different microhabitats. These range from heartwood
at the centre of logs, to the outer surface of logs beneath the bark, through to the leaf
litter underneath.
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