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Humans also have fundamental and realized niches. Like other species, the fundamental niche of humans is bounded by their biological tolerance of extremes of environmental
conditions.
However, unlike other species humans have developed an extraordinary ability to utilize technology to mitigate extremes of environmental conditions, allowing survival in otherwise inhospitable places. In this sense, humans have utilized technological innovations to greatly expand the boundaries of their realized niche. Humans can now sustain themselves in Antarctica, on mountain tops, in the driest deserts, in phenomenal densities in cities, and even in spacecraft.
Humans have also expanded the dimensions of their realized niche by managing the intensity of their interactions with other species. Humans control their own competitors, predators, parasites, and diseases, thereby reducing the constraints that these biological stressors exert on the realized, human niche. Humans also manage the ecological constraints of their mutualistic plants and animals such as agricultural cows, pigs, chickens, and plant crops.
The phenomenal expansion of their realized niche has allowed a great increase in the abundance of humans. For most of their evolutionary history, humans engaged in a hunting and gathering lifestyle, and their global population was probably a few million individuals. The first significant expansions of the realized human niche involved the domestication of fire and the development of primitive tools and agricultural methods, all of which allowed populations to increase. During the past several centuries of extraordinary technological development, populations of humans have grown especially quickly, and in 1995 almost six billion people were alive on Earth. This growth has been accomplished through expansion of the realized niche of industrial humans.
However, it must be understood that the remarkable technological expansions of the realized niche of humans require large and continual subsidies of energy, food, and other resources. These are needed in order to maintain the colonization of difficult environments and to continue the control of constraining ecological influences. If access to these resources is somehow diminished, then the ability of humans to colonize and manage their environment is diminished as well, or it collapses
What else can I help you with?
What is a niche in the environment?
A niche is place that a species fills. Plants fill a niche as herbivores eat them. Bacteria fill a niche as they decompose dead animals and help recycle them.
Why do human beings cannot breath inside the water?
There isn't any oxygen to fill your lungs with.
Why does the Bible say to Adam and Eve go forth and replenish the earth if they were the first humans?
The command to "be fruitful and multiply" given to Adam and Eve in the Bible was meant as an instruction to populate and fill the earth with their descendants. They were the first human beings created by God and were tasked with the responsibility of starting the human race.
What is the niche of of a tiger cub?
Tiger cubs don't have a niche. A niche is a role in the ecosystem, and tiger cubs don't fill any role in the ecosystem until they become independent. Adult tigers fill the niche of apex predator.
What is the variety of plants and animals?
The great variety of plants and animals represents the diversity of nature. There are plants and animals on Earth that fill every available survivable niche.
What is the reason we have species?
They fill a space (niche) in a food web.
What is the great variety of plants and animals?
The great variety of plants and animals represents the diversity of nature. There are plants and animals on Earth that fill every available survivable niche.
Do marsupials fill the same niche as rodents?
some do. You can find a similar placental mammal for every marsupial animal. Example: Kangaroos fill the same niche as North American deer. etc.
What is the ecological niche of a mammal?
Ecological Niches are much more specific than 'Mammal'. For instance, Bears fill the top predator niche in lots of alpine forest regions; while mice fill a seed-eating small-creature niche in the same ecosystem.
What ecological niche did the passenger pigeon fill?
It fills fat mexicans.
What organisms eat plants and fill the plant eating niche?
Herbivores?
Would a mole of hamsters fill the earth?
Of course, human. Your kind cannot escape our furry wrath. ~The Collective Hamsters of Earth
