Answer:
An organism’s niche is its place and role in an ecosystem, including where it lives and how it obtains
the resources it needs to survive. If competing species use the environment differently, or partition
resources, they can coexist in the same area; niche partitioning facilitates coexistence of similar
species in a habitat. In this activity, students use data presented in the HHMI 2015 Holiday Lecture
“How Species Coexist” to explore the concept of niche partitioning, learn about mechanisms of niche
partitioning, and consider the classic grazer-browser spectrum paradigm in light of new dietary data
obtained from DNA metabarcoding.
Explanation:
