HABITAT SELECTION IN PLANTS

Habitat-selection concepts have rarely been explicitly used for plants, perhaps because the majority of them are immobile. For plants, habitat selection results from evolutionary adjustment of species to environmental factors so that the species functions better in some habitats than in others. Habitat choice refers to the ability of a plant to disperse, in space or time, to preferred patches. Habitat specialization means that a species performs best in a small subset of patches in a given location.