Microsite (ecology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A microsite is a term used in ecology to describe a pocket within an environment with unique features, conditions or characteristics. Classifying different microsites may depend on temperature, humidity, sunlight, nutrient availability, soil physical characteristics, vegetation cover, etc. Being a sub environment within an environment, we will examine the qualities that differentiate a microsite from another within an environment in this piece.
Temperature
Microsites being a subset of the environment can be identified with its own:
It refers to the temperature of the surrounding environment measured in degree Fahrenheit. The temperature of one microsite may not necessarily be the same with another one even if they are closely related in terms of location.
Humidity
It refers to the relative amount of moisture that could be held in the air. The more saturated the air is with water vapor in a microsite the more relative it is in humidity.[1]
Sunlight
Plants uses energy from the sunlight to carry on photosynthesis. The possibility of sunlight to reach a microsite is another distinguishing characteristic which creates differences between microsites. There are some areas that the sunlight doesn’t reach which creates a different environmental condition than those that the sun reaches thus making some plants to have more fitness than others.[2]
Availability of nutrients
Some microsites are rich in nutrients while some are not. This is a great difference because seeds germinate more in microsites that have more nutrients it needs than those that lack them. This is because plants and other autotrophs get nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and Sulphur) they need from soil and water available in their microsite.[3]
Soil physical characteristics
Plants obtain hydrogen from water found in the soil. Animals are influence by the soil physical characteristics for example where a fish will survive is not the same like that of a camel or goat.[4] All this features help differentiate one microsite from another and explains the existence of organisms in one and not in the other.
Vegetation cover
This refers to collections of plants species over a land surface. A microsite in the Savana is different from that in the Sahara because of their vegetation cover. This explains the differences existing between the type of organisms that live in both areas.