The concepts of habitat, niche, and the competitive exclusion principle.
Discuss the concepts of habitat, niche, and the competitive exclusion principle. Then using sites of your choice, identify, specifically name, and briefly describe at least four organisms that have invaded the United States from other countries, found an unoccupied niche, and become established. Be sure to identify your sources.
A habitat is the place where an organism lives while a niche is that organism’s role within that environment. Habitat focuses on how the environment impacts the organism while niche focuses on how the organism impacts the environment. Both habitat and niche are important concepts to understanding the balance of an ecosystem and the biodiversity found there. The Russian ecologist G. F. Gause is best known for developing the competitive exclusion principle (Chapter 8, Gause, 1934). The ‘competitive exclusion principle’ (CEP) states that two species with identical niches cannot coexist indefinitely. This principle asserts that no two species can exploit the environment in exactly the same way and coexist – one of the species will be excluded.
