Editing Ecology (section)

=== Habitat ===
{{Main|Habitat}}
[[File:Blue Linckia Starfish.JPG|thumb|upright|Biodiversity of a [[coral reef]]. [[Coral]]s adapt to and modify their environment by forming [[calcium carbonate]] skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species.<ref name="Kiessling09" />]]
[[File:Long-tailed Broadbill (Psarisomus dalhousiae).jpg|thumb|[[Long-tailed broadbill]] building its [[Bird nest|nest]]]]
The habitat of a species describes the environment over which a species is known to occur and the type of community that is formed as a result.<ref name="Whittaker73"/> More specifically, "habitats can be defined as regions in environmental space that are composed of multiple dimensions, each representing a biotic or abiotic environmental variable; that is, any component or characteristic of the environment related directly (e.g. forage biomass and quality) or indirectly (e.g. elevation) to the use of a location by the animal."<ref name="Beyer10"/>{{Rp|745}} For example, a habitat might be an aquatic or terrestrial environment that can be further categorized as a [[Montane ecosystem|montane]] or [[alpine tundra|alpine]] ecosystem. 

Habitat shifts provide important evidence of competition in nature where one population changes relative to the habitats that most other individuals of the species occupy. For example, one population of a species of tropical lizard (''Tropidurus hispidus'') has a flattened body relative to the main populations that live in open savanna. The population that lives in an isolated rock outcrop hides in crevasses where its flattened body offers a selective advantage. Habitat shifts also occur in the developmental [[life history theory|life history]] of amphibians, and in insects that transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. [[Biotope]] and habitat are sometimes used interchangeably, but the former applies to a community's environment, whereas the latter applies to a species' environment.<ref name="Whittaker73"/><ref name="Schoener75"/><ref name="Vitt97"/>