Vacant Niche - History of The Concept

History of The Concept

Whether vacant niches are permissible has been both confirmed and denied as the definition of a niche has changed over time. Within the pre-Hutchinsonian niche frameworks of Grinnell (1917) and Elton (1927) vacant niches were allowable. In the framework of Grinnell, the species niche was largely equivalent to its habitat, such that a niche vacancy could be looked upon as a habitat vacancy. The Eltonian framework considered the niche to be equivalent to a species position in a trophic web, or food chain, and in this respect there is always going to be a vacant niche at the top predator level. Whether this position gets filled depends upon the ecological efficiency of the species filling it however.

The Hutchinsonian niche framework, on the other hand, directly precludes the possibility of there being vacant niches. Hutchinson defined the niche as an n-dimensional hyper-volume whose dimensions correspond to resource gradients over which species are distributed in a unimodal fashion. In this we see that the operational definition of his niche rests on the fact that a species is needed in order to rationally define a niche in the first place. This fact didn't stop Hutchinson from making statements inconsistent with this such as: “The question raised by cases like this is whether the three Nilghiri Corixinae fill all the available niches...or whether there are really empty niches.. . .The rapid spread of introduced species often gives evidence of empty niches, but such rapid spread in many instances has taken place in disturbed areas.” Hutchinson (1957). The concept of the “vacant” or “empty niche” has been used regularly in the scientific literature. Some of the many examples are Elton (1958, pp. 135–136), Rohde (1977, 1979, 1980) Lawton (1984), Price (1984), Compton et al. (1989), Begon et al. (1990) and Cornell (1999). Further examples, some of them in great detail, are discussed in Rohde (2005b).