Habitat

In an ecosystem, the habitat is the place where the community lives.

The concept of habitat is used by biologists and ecologists with one meaning while architects and urban planners use it from an anthropic perspective. In the first case, they refer to the place with certain conditions for a certain organism or a population of a species to live (the term biotope being the analogue that corresponds to a plant or animal community). In the second case, it is the built space in which the human being lives. In this case, the expression built habitat is also used to differentiate it from that used by biology.

World Habitat Day is the first Monday of October each year. It was established by the UN in 1985 to recognize the progress made in the human habitat with special emphasis on cities, gender issues, housing and the environment. work, among others.

Various concepts

There are at least four different concepts of "habitat" in ecology. They have in common the explicit definition of the term and the spatial reference. The explicit character refers to the fact that it is impossible to define habitats where there is no biotic component. The second common factor is the spatial reference, of place, of the place where the biotic element appears. The differences have to do with the two previous factors, if reference is made to a species (or population) or a set of them, and if the space is defined in terms of open area or if a greater number of abiotic factors are included (weather, temperature, etc.).

The habitats of the world

In each region there are different habitats that continually change due to climate or human influence. In the world, there are types of habitats that support various species of animals and vegetation. For a bacterium, a puddle in some city can be its habitat, for a lion its meadow in Africa, and also a bear on a mountain of North America or a snake in an Asian swamp. All these are habitats of various ecosystems that belong to specific places, in which the climate determines and makes it possible for animal and plant life to appear and reproduce in a particular and stable way.

The use of the term in biological sciences appears at the beginning of the 20th century within the community of zoologists of the time, to name the “lebensraum” ('habitat', in German) or habitation of a kind; that is, the space where it lives (do not confuse the concept of habitat with the neologism lebensraum adopted in sociology). The naturalistic-biological concept refers strictly to the geographical location where a certain species is found and its area of distribution. It could be defined as the place where an organism (plant or animal) lives naturally. It is a simple and clear concept, easy to understand and interpret and does not present much ambiguity. However, for cases such as those of migratory species and/or with development and reproduction cycles in different places, the spatial definition may not be a simple task. In such cases, to stay within the concept, reference is made to complex habitat types.

With the development of ecological theory, an environmental dimension was added to this first concept and abiotic factors were introduced as a fundamental part of the definition, becoming the space that meets the physical and biological characteristics necessary for the survival and reproduction of a kind.

This second definition refers directly to the biotic and abiotic conditions present in a certain space, suitable for a certain species. It frees the concept of the strict presence of the species to limit this space, since it is defined only in terms of its environmental requirements. It is no longer the actual distribution of the species that is determining, but rather the space that meets the conditions for it to occur; this space is thus divided into real habitat and potential habitat.

These two habitat concepts are monospecific and limited to the management of autoecological problems; only marginally can synecological approaches be addressed with them. From the perspective of conservation they are especially practical, applied, for example, to specific problems of threatened or endangered species. However, in more general, holistic studies or on a larger ecological scale, the two previous definitions may be insufficient or inappropriate. Thus, a third concept is reached, which stands out from the previous ones by integrating not one but several species in its explicit definition to conform more to an environmental unit, discernible from other units. Habitat is then spoken of in terms of the space shared by various species, characterized by a certain uniformity of biotic and abiotic conditions. Then, suitable (optimal) environmental characteristics are considered not only for one species but for several. In this case it is the biocenosis that defines the habitat; which introduces the need for uniformity. The different habitats are detected or identified by the change or modification of that uniformity.

Linking the concept of habitat to that of biocenosis entails some particularly practical characteristics with respect to the other two definitions:

• Spatially unique: one space cannot correspond to two different habitats at the same time.
• Environmentally uniform: its explicit definition is multi-specific, and therefore is not sensitive to species with complex life cycles.
• Structurer species: in the group of species that make up the biotic component are defined as those to which the presence of others is conditioned.

The habitat can only be defined from the set of structuring species or settlements. In other words, it is independent of the level of organization of the biotic component. This concept of habitat can be confused with that of biotope; however, in general, the latter refers specifically to the topographic space occupied by the different biological communities.

It is possible to subdivide a habitat into several microhabitats, or portions of the habitat space, that always go together.

Habitat Classes

Habitats are classified into terrestrial habitats, marine habitats, and inland water habitats.

A terrestrial habitat is an oxygen-containing habitat where there is a possibility of sudden temperature change/weather change. It is on the earth's surface (geosphere).

A marine habitat is a habitat located in marine waters, in oceans and seas, (hydrosphere). Light only reaches the first 50-100 meters below the surface, the temperature does not vary abruptly and living beings are fully adapted to marine salinity.

An inland water habitat is an amount of standing or moving water far from maritime territory. There the temperature does not change abruptly and its clarity and luminosity depend on the turbidity of the water.

Biomes respond to certain climatic, environmental, and geographic characteristics. In this way, different types of biomes have been formed, such as the following (the columns are divided by habitat type):

Habitat in architecture and urbanism

Control of the environment and the creation of adequate conditions for their needs and the development of their activities are issues that man has raised since his origins.

The design of housing throughout history reflects the different solutions adopted in each period to the problem of providing a small and controlled environment, within the vast natural space, generally punished by adverse factors such as cold, heat, wind, rain and sun.

Human adaptation to the environment was and still is an essential principle in the world of architecture. Vitruvius said in De architecture : "The style of the buildings must be manifestly different in Egypt than in Spain, in Pontus and in Rome, and in countries and regions with different characteristics", referring to the fact that each Each zone has a different climate and therefore the construction in each zone has to follow the most adaptable conditions to its environment.

In order to differentiate it from the biological meaning, architects have coined the concept of built habitat (collective or individual habitat) in order to clarify the anthropic option.