Title: key concepts
Course: What can WE do for biodiversity? The European Strategies for habitat conservation > Section: 1_A tale of succes: behind the Iberian lynx tracks

The ecological niche is the role and position a species has in its environment: how it meets its needs for food and shelter, how it survives, and how it reproduces. A species' niche includes all of its interactions with the biotic and abiotic factors of its environment. It is advantageous for a species to occupy a unique niche in an ecosystem because it reduces the amount of competition for resources that species will encounter.

There are species which need a very defined ecological niche to survive (specialist), like the capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), while others, like the wild boar (Sus scrofa), can live in a wide range of variate ecological niche (generalist).

A capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) ^[1] in the Pyrenees and a wild boar (Sus scrofa) ^[2]

[1] De Arturo de Frias Marques - Trabajo propio, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28963698

[2] By Valentin Panzirsch - File:Wildschein, Nähe Pulverstampftor.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0 at, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46902117