Habitat and Niche — Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

Habitat and Niche

A habitat is the specific environment where an organism lives and finds everything it needs to survive — food, water, shelter, and space. Habitats vary enormously: a forest, a coral reef, a desert, a rotting log, or even the human gut are all habitats for different organisms. An organism’s habitat must provide the right conditions of temperature, moisture, light, and resources for that species to survive and reproduce. When a habitat is destroyed or degraded, the organisms that depend on it are threatened.

The concept of ecological niche goes deeper than habitat. While habitat describes where an organism lives, niche describes how it lives — its role in the ecosystem. A niche includes what an organism eats, what eats it, when it is active, how it interacts with other species, and even the conditions of temperature and moisture it prefers. No two species can occupy exactly the same niche in the same habitat for long, because they would compete for the same resources. This principle is called competitive exclusion.

When similar species do share a habitat, they typically partition their niches to reduce direct competition. Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos Islands are a famous example: different finch species evolved different beak shapes to feed on different food sources — seeds of different sizes, insects, cactus flowers, or even blood from seabirds. Warbler warblers in northeastern North American forests divide the same spruce trees by feeding at different heights and in different parts of the branches. This niche partitioning allows multiple similar species to coexist.

Habitat loss is the leading cause of species extinction worldwide. When forests are cleared, wetlands drained, or grasslands converted to farmland, the habitats of many species are destroyed. Even when some natural land remains, habitat fragmentation — the breaking of large habitats into small isolated patches — can be nearly as harmful. Small habitat patches cannot support large predators, reduce genetic diversity, and expose wildlife to edge effects. Conservation efforts focus on protecting and restoring habitat and creating wildlife corridors that connect fragmented patches.

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