Ecological license

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ecological license is a term that is rarely used today for the fact that a biotope enables the formation of different ecological niches or different ecological “permanent positions” or not.

Air does not offer an ecological license for planktonic “permanent positions”, while water as an environmental medium grants these ecological licenses due to its greater density. Because of the lack of a “permanent position”, there is also no ecological license for sessile terrestrial animals. Another example are birds of prey that hunt in circles in the air - there is no ecological license for them in densely forested landscapes.

The expression was coined by the biologist Günther Osche in his textbook from 1972, who took it from an article from 1949 by the Berlin biologist Klaus Günther and modified its original definition. The term is neither used in German nor in international ecological terminology.

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  • Günther Osche: Evolution. Herder Verlag, Freiburg. 1972.
  • Michael Schmitt (1987): Ecological niche sensu Günther and ecological license sensu Osche - two valuable but poorly appreciated expanatory concepts. Zoological contributions NF 31: 49-60.