What is habitat? Ambiguity in the use of technical jargon

Abstract

Scientific and technical language may lead to confusion if the meaning of the terms used is not clear to the audience. The term habitat is part of the ecologists’ jargon, and several authors have highlighted its ambiguous or confusing use in scientific publications. I conducted a poll among ecologists and other environmental scientists to know what is the meaning that they assign to the term habitat. I compared the results from this poll with the meaning that ecologists and other environmental scientists assigned to this word in research articles published in Ecología Austral. Most ecologists and environmental scientists considered that there is only one proper definition of habitat: “The habitat of an organism is the place where it lives, or the place where one should look for it”. However, the most frequent use of this term in the analyzed research articles was as a synonym for “environment”, a definition rarely selected by the professionals surveyed. Because there is more than one definition for the term habitat, and some of them are imposed by customary use, its meaning has to be interpreted by contextual clues. The best way to avoid confusion in the use of technical jargon is to define its meaning at the onset of a publication and to use it consistently throughout the text.