Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A very small, specialized habitat, such as a clump of grass or a space between rocks.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A specific
habitat , typically extremely small, such as a cave corner or acardboard box.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word microhabitat.
Examples
-
MIT researchers have built a tiny microhabitat to study the food chain of marine microbes.
Boing Boing 2008
-
This new laboratory tool creates a microhabitat where tiny sea creatures live, swim, assimilate chemicals and eat each other.
Boing Boing 2008
-
For small mobile animals (e.g., wingless soil invertebrates such as Collembola and mites), habitat selection on a very small spatial scale (microhabitat selection) enables individuals to find spatial refuges with temperature and moisture regimes adequate for survival [80].
-
The richness is due to the wide variety of macrohabitats and microhabitat mosaics resulting from the range of elevations, soils and climatic conditions, including the co-existence of winter-rainfall species with summer-rainfall species from further east.
-
Many arctic animals possess adaptations for escaping unfavorable weather, resource shortages, or other unfavorable conditions through either winter dormancy or by selection of refuges at a wide range of spatial scales, including microhabitat selection at any given site, seasonal habitat shifts within landscapes, and long-distance seasonal migrations within or across geographic regions.
-
Differently stated, each species may have been competitively excluding the others from its foraging microhabitat, thus allowing coexistence in the larger habitat; with the use of different foraging techniques enhancing resource sharing.
-
The potential protection offered to a species against climate changes by its microhabitat is one of the traits under the category Range characteristics.
Species vulnerability traits AYDIN 2008
-
For example, many invertebrates take refuge under rocks where they find a humid habitat away from sunlight and predators; the undersides of rocks are their microhabitat.
Archive 2008-02-01 AYDIN 2008
-
On Vertisols and Alfisols, microhabitat processes are important.
-
In the lithosols of the mountains, podzolization is the main soil-forming process, and a rich diversity of variable and localized soil conditions have selected for microhabitat plant specialists.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.