82 Informational environments
comprises effects that manifest themselves first, within the lifespan of the organism himself and his contemporaries, second, over the course of generations of a
population and third, in the selectively relevant conditions for further evolution
within a population. Moreover, the active adapting of conditions in the environment includes the creation both of recurring patterns, such as seasonal collecting
and storing of food, and of more persistent effects or structures, such as built
features of the environment or tools.
The concept of ecological niches in biology may in effect, if not in intention,
turn out to obscure the dynamics and bi-directionality of organism-environment
relations that are at issue here, and sometimes even their specificity. The earliest concept of an ecological niche, as introduced by Joseph Grinnell (1917), still
referred to niches as the particular delimitation of a concrete species’ habitat, and
hence as tailored to that species, with the aim of describing the current status of
the environmental relationships of an organism by a naturalist. For its focus on
as-is conditions, a perspective on the dynamics of organism-environment relations was not part of this account, whereas specificity was the aim by definition.
In the meantime, a concept of ecological niches has become entrenched that
compartmentalises environments into specifications of functional roles for adaptive traits and maps them onto types of spatio-temporal contexts. An ecological
niche, on this influential view, which was proposed by Charles Elton (1927), actually is an organism’s functional role, or “its place in the biotic environment, its
relation to food and enemies” (Charles Elton 1927, 63–64, emphasis in original).
Defined in the Eltonian way, there would be niches, for example for aerial predators specialised on terrestrial animals, with sub-specifications for prey size; that
niche would require certain conditions regarding terrain and climate to be present,
and it would be populated by eagles, hawks or falcons; it might have been populated by Pterosaurs during the Cretaceous; the niche for aerial scavengers would
vary from the former in several respects, and would be populated by Andean or
California Condors or any other organism who meets the specifications for the
niche. Thus defined, an ecological niche might be occupied by various species
at different times, in different places, and it might remain unpopulated in some
places, at some time. An ecological niche is hence considered stable over place
and time, and it is specific only with respect to functional role specifications.
All the dynamics of changing environments would leave the functional roles and
matching types of locations intact while allowing both for types of locations being
realised in various places over time and for ecological equilibria to be upset, so
that inhabitants of niches become dislodged and possibly replaced by new tenants,
resulting in the establishment of new equilibria.
In another classic definition that competes with Elton’s, Evelyn Hutchinson
(1957) distinguishes between the “fundamental” and “realised niche” of a species. The former is defined in abstraction from all constraining factors, such as
competition and predator-prey relationships, as a hypothetical “n-dimensional
hypervolume”, to be described as a geometric function, and composed of the
coordinates of all values of all relevant variables in the ecological environment
of some species. That space is bounded by the limit values of those variables
comprises effects that manifest themselves first, within the lifespan of the organism himself and his contemporaries, second, over the course of generations of a
population and third, in the selectively relevant conditions for further evolution
within a population. Moreover, the active adapting of conditions in the environment includes the creation both of recurring patterns, such as seasonal collecting
and storing of food, and of more persistent effects or structures, such as built
features of the environment or tools.
The concept of ecological niches in biology may in effect, if not in intention,
turn out to obscure the dynamics and bi-directionality of organism-environment
relations that are at issue here, and sometimes even their specificity. The earliest concept of an ecological niche, as introduced by Joseph Grinnell (1917), still
referred to niches as the particular delimitation of a concrete species’ habitat, and
hence as tailored to that species, with the aim of describing the current status of
the environmental relationships of an organism by a naturalist. For its focus on
as-is conditions, a perspective on the dynamics of organism-environment relations was not part of this account, whereas specificity was the aim by definition.
In the meantime, a concept of ecological niches has become entrenched that
compartmentalises environments into specifications of functional roles for adaptive traits and maps them onto types of spatio-temporal contexts. An ecological
niche, on this influential view, which was proposed by Charles Elton (1927), actually is an organism’s functional role, or “its place in the biotic environment, its
relation to food and enemies” (Charles Elton 1927, 63–64, emphasis in original).
Defined in the Eltonian way, there would be niches, for example for aerial predators specialised on terrestrial animals, with sub-specifications for prey size; that
niche would require certain conditions regarding terrain and climate to be present,
and it would be populated by eagles, hawks or falcons; it might have been populated by Pterosaurs during the Cretaceous; the niche for aerial scavengers would
vary from the former in several respects, and would be populated by Andean or
California Condors or any other organism who meets the specifications for the
niche. Thus defined, an ecological niche might be occupied by various species
at different times, in different places, and it might remain unpopulated in some
places, at some time. An ecological niche is hence considered stable over place
and time, and it is specific only with respect to functional role specifications.
All the dynamics of changing environments would leave the functional roles and
matching types of locations intact while allowing both for types of locations being
realised in various places over time and for ecological equilibria to be upset, so
that inhabitants of niches become dislodged and possibly replaced by new tenants,
resulting in the establishment of new equilibria.
In another classic definition that competes with Elton’s, Evelyn Hutchinson
(1957) distinguishes between the “fundamental” and “realised niche” of a species. The former is defined in abstraction from all constraining factors, such as
competition and predator-prey relationships, as a hypothetical “n-dimensional
hypervolume”, to be described as a geometric function, and composed of the
coordinates of all values of all relevant variables in the ecological environment
of some species. That space is bounded by the limit values of those variables