concept

Ecological niche

Not a place, but the complete set of conditions under which a species can survive and reproduce - temperature, food, moisture, active hours and dozens of other axes, stacked into what G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1957 called an n-dimensional hypervolume. Crucially, a niche is a property of the environment, a job posted by the physics and chemistry of a place, sitting there as a real opening before anything fills it. That is why ecological roles recur across separate continents - and worlds.