Here are a few of the fundamental words in ecology, which are simple, but may be easy to mix up because they are so similar. It is, however, quite important to be clear of what they mean. I will here try to explain how they differ by defining them and giving a few examples to illustrate how they could be applied.
A habitat is basically the site where an organism or a group lives. It may be anything from a stone in a lake, on which algae grows, to a forest containing all sorts of creatures. Note that groups within a habitat do not need to be of the same species. However, one usually speaks of habitats of individuals, species, or larger groups. For instance, the habitat of the algae would be the stone in the lake, and the forest could be the habitat of a single bear – regardless of what other organisms live there and how they are geographically distributed; here we are interested in the bear, so we define the habitat as its home range, and all that falls within it will arbitrarily be a apart of its habitat. hope this helps
