The term used to describe an organism's role in its environment is called its niche. A niche encompasses how an organism meets its needs for food and shelter, survives, and reproduces within its habitat. It includes not only the organism's physical location and resource utilization but also its interactions with other species, such as competition, predation, and symbiosis. Understanding an organism's niche helps ecologists predict how changes in the environment or species composition might affect ecosystem dynamics. Niche differentiation can reduce competition and promote biodiversity by allowing multiple species to coexist within the same ecosystem.