Indigenous (ecology)

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In biogeography, a species is defined as indigenous or native to a given region or ecosystem, if its presence in that region is the result of only natural resources, with no human intervention. Every natural organism (instead of domesticated organisms) has its own natural range of distribution, in which it is regarded as native. Outside this native range, a species may be introduced by human activity; it is then referred to as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.

An indigenous species is not necessarily endemic. In biology and ecology, endemic means exclusively native to the biota of a specific place. An indigenous species may occur in more than one locale.

The terms endemic and indigenous do not mean that an organism necessarily originated or evolved where it is found.

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