User:Occamstaser/Niche Conservatism

Niche conservatism (NC) is the idea that species or groups of related species tend to retain their ecological niche characteristics over time. (Harvey and Pagel 1991; Holt and Gaines 1992; Latham and Rickleffs 1993; Peterson et al. 1999). NC is based on the notion that all organisms have a fundamental ecological niche (the set of abiotic parameters that are needed survive and reproduce; Hutchison 1957), and it traces its roots back to modeling experiments and empirical evidence which indicated that evolutionary change in the fundamental niche of organisms is difficult (Harvey and Pagel 1991; Holt and Gaines 1992; Latham and Rickleffs 1993). Specifically, these models indicated that in a rapidly changing environment, extinction should out-pace adaptation. In other words, from an evolutionary perspective, it is generally hard to change what you do and how you do it.