Potential Causes of Vacant Niches
Vacant niches could potentially have several causes.
• Radical disturbances in a habitat: For example, droughts or forest fires can destroy a flora and fauna partially or completely. However, in such cases species suitable for the habitat usually survive in the neighbourhood and colonize the vacated niches, leading to a relatively fast re-establishment of the original conditions.
• Radical and long-lasting changes in the environment: such as ice ages.
• Evolutionary contingencies: suitable species did not evolve for usually unknown reasons, or niche segregation between pre-existing species created a novel niche vacancy.
Read more about this topic: Vacant Niche
Famous quotes containing the words potential and/or vacant:
“The germ of violence is laid bare in the child abuser by the sheer accident of his individual experience ... in a word, to a greater degree than we like to admit, we are all potential child abusers.”
—F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Mexican professor of pathology, author. “Reflections on Child Abuse,” Notes of an Anatomist (1985)
“Every time I bestow a vacant office I make a hundred discontented persons and one ingrate.”
—Louis XIV (1638–1715)