Myrmecophiles in the Ecosystem of Ant Nests

“THE ‘NICHE’ OF an animal means its place in the biotic environment, its relations to food and enemies.” These words by Charles Sutherland Elton (1927) defined and classified an ecological niche according to the foraging activity of a population of a species. According to Elton, the niche is defined by the species’ response to, and impact on, the environment. Later ecologists (in particular G. Evelyn Hutchinson 1959) extended this definition, stating that an ecological niche is the role and position a species has in its environment: how it meets the species’ needs for food, shelter, survival, and reproduction. “A species’