Habitat

A habitat is the specific place or area in which a particular species lives. Factors such as sunlight, average rainfall, annual temperature, the type of soil present, and other abiotic (topographic) factors, together determine which organisms can occur there and in what numbers -- these factors govern the presence of a particular species in a given environment. Ponds, rivers and oceans are all examples of habitats, since many different organisms are found co-existing in the same place; habitats themselves may be classed as arboreal, terrestrial, aerial or aquatic, among others. The immediate surroundings of an organism are sometimes called its microhabitat -- an important concept when studying sedentary or only weakly motile organisms, for which the fine-scale conditions right around them matter more than the broad habitat type. …