Conformers tend to have tall, narrow response curves with acute peaks and spanning only a small part of the gradient. Homeostatic organisms tend to have low, broad, flat-topped response curves spanning a large part of the environmental gradient. Regulators lie somewhere on a continuum between conformer and homeostasis. Dominant response modes are also often correlated with environmental grain. Conversely, homeostatic organisms are often successful in fine-grained situations, performing well under a broad range of conditions.
Regulators are usually intermediate.
The concept itself has evolved over the decades, encompassing at least three major ideas. This original concept arose directly from extensive physiological studies, usually in the laboratory, of individual's response curves and especially of their limits of tolerance. This approach assumes that the abiotic environment is the major control of ecological processes, and mainly deals with the properties of individuals. Resource use leads to the process of ecological competition . This concept of niche dominated thinking for several decades during which it was accepted that competition for resources was the major ecological interaction among organisms.