Habitat

The physical environment that an organism (or a population of organisms) lives in is called it's Habitat. It can be described using the biotic and abiotic factors we have been looking at. For each of the biotic features an organism will have a prefered niche range. Outside this range the some organism will may survive in a marginal niche, but will be stressed. Large variance from the prefered niche normally causes the organisms to avoid those conditions (if mobile) and may cause death.




The above graph show plant growth at a range of temperature. In class we looked at a W.A. study on trout which found their prefered niche was 8 - 17 oC. The study also showed trout could survive in water as cold as 2oC and as hot as 27oC, but outside the prefered range they were unlikely to breed. The study also looked at other factors such as pH, and salinity.


We also looked at Dingo habitats and saw that a very mobile animal such as a Dingo may have everal types of habitat in a pack's home range such as Hills, Woodland and Riverine in order to provide all the water and prey the pack needed. The dingos seemed to prefer the productive wooded riverbanks and spent a large proportion of their time in these areas only occasionally visiting the rocky mountainous areas in their range.