OLM 10.4 Historical reflections on the development of the niche concept
Probably, the “Concluding remarks” by Hutchinson (1957) is the most central piece of the decades-long niche discourse. He studied spatial distribution of species along an environmental gradient, as determined by its environmental tolerance (cf. Ch5Toler). He observed that competitive exclusion was expected between species of identical “niches” – assuming single-factor local limitation. Competition of species with partially overlapping niches may shrink their area of distribution (realized niches). The qualitative idea comes from Grinnel (1917). Huchinson’s contribution is the set theoretical formulation: the niche of a species is a subset of an N dimensional abstract niche space. The dimensions, or niche axes, are the environmental conditions, roughly the variables we considered, as modifying. .......