The Ecological Consequences of Environmental Heterogeneity

Species Formation

• One ecological consequence of environmental heterogeneity is the extreme amounts of species formation that define the biological landscape. If the environment were homogeneous, or uniform in character, there would be no cause or impetus for a large variety of different birds to flourish, for instance. It is precisely the lack of uniformity, the diversity of a heterogeneous environment, that causes many different species of organisms to evolve and branch off from one another.

Habitat Specialization

• Another major ecological consequence of environmental heterogeneity is that the many different species that exist in the world each adapt to their own specialized ecological niche within the larger environment. Species seek an ideal environment, or a homogeneous environment. Heterogeneity creates new species, but those species seek niches within the environment that are relatively stable and uniform, which in turn gives rise to more species formation as the environment changes, evolves and becomes more heterogeneous.

Created Heterogeneity

• There are a wide variety of scales on which environmental heterogeneity is created. Alterations in the chemical properties of soil, for instance, affect heterogeneity, but heterogeneity can happen at larger scales as well. Grazing herds, for instance, can introduce a certain kind of heterogeneity in to an environment because they consume the existing plant matter.

Destruction and Growth

• Heterogeneity, and the chaos that characterizes it, is one of the many factors at the heart of the evolutionary process. The lack of uniformity leads to cycles of destruction and growth, and ecological consequences on a time scale that are not always obvious to humans. Nature is a process, and the temporal aspect of environmental heterogeneity is as important as the spatial aspect.