I’m having trouble figuring out what an unoccupied ecological niche is. I know what an ecological niche is, but what does it mean if it’s unoccupied?
Posted on February 14, 2012.
I’m having trouble figuring out what an unoccupied ecological niche is. I know what an ecological niche is, but what does it mean if it’s unoccupied?
Unoccupied mean unoccupied. It can mean never before occupied, available, or vacated (by extinction). When the atmosphere had enough ozone for land plants, there was an unoccupied niche. The plants created an unoccupied niche for terrestrial herbivores. The herbivores created a niche for predators.
The process repeats itself when a new volcanic island forms. Some seeds arrive on the waves. Birds (possibly with some seed in their digestive tracts) and insects find their way there, by storm or by chance. Animals arrive on rafts of debris. Each finds a way to survive, adapting to exploit resources (adaptive radiation).
The extreme is mass extinction events, when the survivors find new ways to live during the recovery.
If a niche is unoccupied it means that no current organism is fulfilling this potential role. Niches can be created through novel adaptations, but niches can also become vacant by something like extinction events. The classic example is the KT extinction event that killed the dinosaurs and caused the mammalian boom- mammal clades rapidly diversified after this event (although some scientists argue against this).