Habitatares

Habitatares is a term used in ecology to describe agents that modify habitats to create, maintain, or improve living spaces for other organisms. The word is derived from habitare ('to inhabit') and a plural suffix, and it is employed to emphasize the role of actors that shape habitat structure, resources, or microclimates, thereby influencing community assembly and ecosystem processes. Habitatares can be biotic, abiotic, or a combination, and may operate across spatial and temporal scales.

Biotic habitatares include organisms that physically alter the environment, such as beavers that build dams, corals and other reef builders that create three-dimensional habitat, and vegetation like mangroves that modify hydrology and sedimentation. Abiotic habitatares include processes like wind shaping dunes, sedimentation patterns, wildfire regimes, or geomorphological change that open niches for new species. Human activities also function as habitatares, through land-use change, irrigation, dam construction, and drainage, which can rapidly reconfigure habitats.

The concept aligns with ecosystem engineering and niche construction, but habitatares foreground the agent as the driver of habitat change. Recognizing habitatares helps explain patterns of species distribution, community resilience, and feedbacks between organisms and environment. Critics note the term overlaps with existing concepts and may lack standardized definitions.

See also: ecosystem engineering, habitat modification, niche construction.