The role that an organism or a population plays in its environment is called its ecological niche. Now, not every niche is going to be glamorous, as you can see with this dung beetle right here. However, the point is more about finding a niche that isn't occupied by anyone else, so that you can best exploit the resources available there. Now, organisms are going to have a range of conditions that they can survive in, and we call this an organism's fundamental niche. This is just all the environmental conditions suitable to the organism, ignoring the interspecific interactions. Now the realized niche is going to be the part of the fundamental niche that an organism will actually occupy due to the limiting factors imposed upon it. So this outer ring represents the fundamental niche, and this inner ring the organism's realized niche, or I should say inner area.
Now, species in a community are going to compete. Both individuals within a species are going to compete, and individuals from different species are going to compete with each other. Intraspecific competition is going to occur between individuals of the same species, and because these individuals are of the same species, they're going to have the same niche, which means they're going to compete for the same resources, which is why this is a density-dependent competition. As density goes up, so does competition. Now interspecific competition is when individuals of different species have overlapping niches, and this can result in either symmetric competition, where both species are negatively affected by the competition, or asymmetric competition where one is much more negatively affected than the other.
Now it's common for one species to outcompete another due to certain fitness trade-offs. For example, an organism might have, you know, developed certain traits that make it really efficient at gathering some type of food, for example. However, there's a trade-off for this, you know, by gaining that skill, they're sacrificing an opportunity elsewhere. So it should be noted that species that excel at competing for certain resources will be lacking in other areas. Anyhow, let's flip the page.