Vacant niche (original) (raw)

The issue of what exactly defines a vacant niche, also known as empty niche, and whether they exist in ecosystems is controversial. The subject is intimately tied into a much broader debate on whether ecosystems can reach equilibrium, where they could theoretically become maximally saturated with species. Given that saturation is a measure of the number of species per resource axis per ecosystem, the question becomes: is it useful to define unused resource clusters as niche 'vacancies'?