Living organisms live everywhere on the globe: in ground-air space, aquatic environment, soil, and even in other living beings. Each species in nature lives in a specific environment with which it directly interacts.
What is a habitat? In order to answer this question, we consider broader concepts: community, biocenosis and biogeocenosis. Everyone knows that plants or animals that occupy homogeneous areas of the territory and interact with each other form communities. Those, in turn, are interconnected with all organisms that live in a given territory, forming a biocenosis. Interacting with factors of inanimate nature (temperature, humidity, lighting, etc.), organisms form a single complex with the circulation of substances and energy, which is commonly called biogeocenosis. Each species in an ecosystem feeds on certain foods and is the basis of nutrition for other organisms (food chain), and also survives in conditions - abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic - that are optimally suited to it. Habitat, which is the territory of the settlement of a certain taxon with clearborders will also exist if the conditions are right. After all, it is here that all the prerequisites for the prosperity of specific microorganisms, plants or animals are created.
The range is called continuous if the species lives in the entire area suitable for its habitat, or is regularly found in its certain places. Sometimes organisms can inhabit isolated areas on the border of a certain territory or water area, forming the so-called island localities. If the habitat is divided into several unconnected sections in such a way that animal migration and the exchange of seeds or spores in plants are impossible, then it is called discontinuous, or disjunctive.
A rest
Accurate, very small areas of habitat of ancient families, genera and species, which in the past occupied vast territories, are called relict, for example, ginkgo biloba or this. Sagovinic. Also, the habitat, depending on its size, may belong to the so-called cosmopolitans, if it is extensive, and to endemics, if it is small.
Territories inhabited by certain species of plants and animals undergo changes due to active human intervention, sometimes leading to their complete destruction. However, after the death of representatives of the flora and fauna that lived in this area, it is populated by new representatives of the animal and plant world. To study the settlement, the boundaries are determined. To do this, the map indicates the places whereanimals live or plants of a particular species grow, for example, a cheetah or Siberian fir. Such mapping helps to determine the distribution of plant and animal resources, the distribution of crop and forest pests, disease vectors, etc.
The question of what a habitat is can be answered as follows: it is an area with clear boundaries, within which a certain taxon is distributed and goes through a full cycle of its development. Organisms exist here due to the close relationship between environmental factors and other representatives of flora and fauna.
