CHAPTER 6

LIMITING FACTORS AND RANGES

OF TOLERANCE
Habitat

 A special place where every species in a

community lives.
 Is the ecological or environmental area that is
inhabited by a particular animal or plant
species.
 The natural environment in which an organism
lives, or
 The physical environment that surrounds
(influences and is utilized by) a species
population.
Subdivisions of Habitats

 Terrestrial or land habitat

 Aquatic or water habitat

 Marine or salt water habitat
 Fresh water habitat
 Brackish or water in an estuary
Microhabitat

 A physical location that is home to very small

creatures, such as woodlice
Ecological Niche

 An understanding of how an organism

effectively survives and manages its
immediate habitat.
 The operation of living communities
necessitates study of the relationships among
all organism.
 A term describing the relational position of a
species or population in its ecosystem to each
other.
 “niche” is derived from Middle French word
nicher, meaning to nest.
 Coined by the naturalist Joseph Grinnell in
1917.
 A short definition of niche is how an organism
makes a living.
 Habitat is the organism’s address while niche
is its profession.
RELATED TERMS
Fundamental Niche-

the full range of environmental conditions

(biological and physical) under which an
organism can exist describes.
Realized Niche

 Organisms occupy a niche that is narrower

which they are mostly highly adapted as a
result of pressure from superior competitors.
Limiting Factors

 A factor that controls a process, such as

organism growth or species population, size
or distribution.
 Availability of food, predation pressure or
availability of shelter.
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum

 Also known as Liebig’s Law or the Lao of the

Minimum.
 Developed in agricultural science by Carl
Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by
Justus von Liebig.
 It states that growth is controlled not by the
total of resources available, but by the
scarcest resource (limiting factor).
Range of tolerance

 Organisms with narrow ranges of tolerance

(prefix- steno)
 Organisms with broad ranges of tolerance
(prefix- eury)
 Euryhydric- broad range of tolerance for soil
moisture.
 Stenohydric- narrow range of tolerance for
soil moisture.
Shelfords Law of Tolerance

 A law proposed by V.E. Shelford in 1913.

 States that “the presence and success of a
organism depend upon the extent to which a
complex of conditions are satisfied. The
absence or failure of an organism can be
controlled by the qualitative or quantitative
deficiency or excess or any one of several
factors which may approach the limits of
tolerance for that organism.”
Subsidiary principles of
Shelfords Law
 Organism may have a wide range of tolerance
for one factor and a narrow range of
tolerance for another.
 Organisms with wider range of tolerance for
all factors are likely to be most widely
distributed.
Acclimation

 Also known as acclimatization.

 The process of an organism adjusting to
change in its environment.
Ecotypes

 Coined by Gote Turesson in 1922.

 Used to describe a genetically distinct
geographic variety, population or race within
species.
 Adapted to specific environmental conditions
such as local selective pressure or physical
isolation.