How seabirds share their habitat
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - 11:30
in Biology & Nature
When different species of seabirds share a habitat with limited sources of food, they must differ in their feeding habits. This specialization is known by biologists as an "ecological niche". Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell have investigated how flexible these ecological niches really are. They discovered that the preying habits of diving seabirds are very different, both in location and timing, within species as well as between different species. Ecological niches are not inflexible; they are affected by different habitats and the need to avoid competition with neighbours or evade predators, and also lead to different forms of behavior within a single species (Ecosphere, December 20, 2010).
