Ecological Niche - Grinnellian Niche

Grinnellian Niche

The word "niche" is derived from the Middle French word nicher, meaning to nest. The term was coined by the naturalist Joseph Grinnell in 1917, in his paper "The niche relationships of the California Thrasher." The Grinnellian niche concept embodies the idea that the niche of a species is determined by the habitat in which it lives. In other words, the niche is the sum of the habitat requirements that allow a species to persist and produce offspring. For example, the behavior of the California Thrasher is consistent with the chaparral habitat it lives in—it breeds and feeds in the underbrush and escapes from its predators by shuffling from underbrush to underbrush.

This perspective of niche allows for the existence of ecological equivalents and also empty niches. For example, the Anolis lizards of the Greater Antilles are a rare example of convergent evolution, adaptive radiation, and the existence of ecological equivalents: the Anolis lizards evolved in similar microhabitats independently of each other and resulted in the same ecomorphs across all four islands.