The Niche Concept Revisited: Mechanistic Models and Community Context Matthew A. Leibold Ecology, Vol. 76, No. 5. (Jul., 1995), pp. 1371-1382.
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1990, Pianka 1994), the concept (or a near synonym) is used by ecologists working at most levels of ecological organization. Thus, physiological ecologists often work to identify environmental conManuscript received 9 June 1994; revised 7 November 1994; accepted 24 November 1994.

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MATHEW A. LEIBOLD

Ecology, Vol. 76, No. 5

ditions (including factors other than resources) that affect an organism's performance (and implicitly, some component of its fitness). Similarly, much of population biology is concerned with identifying limiting factors of the environment that can alter the dynamics of populations (whether density dependent or not). Biogeographers consider how environmental conditions can constrain the distributions of taxa, and ecosystems ecologists seek ways of describing how the functional traits of taxa (whether species or functional groups) alter ecosystem processes or structure. The niche concept is not always used explicitly in theories at all these levels of organization, but it provides an important, if sometimes implicit, connection between these disparate fields of ecology that justifies its status as a fundamental ecological concept (Cherrett 1989, Real and Brown 1991). Despite its strong synthetic role and its crucial importance in community theory, the niche concept remains unclear: "most [ecologists] would