Habitat

A habitat is the kind of place in which a species naturally lives, described by its physical and living features: a coral reef, a freshwater pond, the floor of a rainforest, or, for some microbes, the gut of an animal. A suitable habitat provides everything the organism needs to survive and reproduce, including food, water, shelter from weather and predators, and enough room. For a plant that means the right mix of light, water, temperature and soil.

Habitat is related to, but different from, an ecological niche. The habitat is a species' address, the place where it is found, while the niche is its role there: what it eats, when it is active and how it interacts with other species. Habitat also differs from range, the whole geographic area over which a species occurs. Because many species can live only within a narrow set of conditions, the destruction, breaking up and degrading of habitats by farming, logging, dams and building is one of the leading threats to biodiversity.

Conservation laws often protect critical habitat rather than individual animals, because a species cannot persist without the places it depends on, and restoring habitat is a common goal of conservation projects.