Squid largely exist in complex undersea environments called pelagic oceans which bring a broad range of habitats including distinct mesoscale oceanographic features such as eddies and meandering fronts (Alabia et al., 2015).  These formations are of importance because generated from them are hotspots, defined as regions of intense biological activity and persistent aggregations of species.  Due to this, these hotspots provide vital locations that are of great ecological importance to a variety of species.  Many squid are located within these hotspots as they are widely distributed through subtropical and temperate oceans (Alabia et al., 2015).  As climate change begins to affect this species ability to exist within certain areas due to their inflexibility to changes in water pH, conservation efforts will be forced to become more expensive to aid in the retention of such a species to these ecosystems.  This will be necessary due to the impact squid hold in the food web, holding a mid-trophic level in which they are a vital food source for larger predators.  Due to squid primarily relying on small pelagic fishes and other cephalopods as food sources, squid bridge an important gap between the larger predators and create important connections between tertiary trophic level animals and top predators within these environments, to which their removal would drastically impact this cycle (Alabia et al., 2015).   Research from Alabia and peers further finds that squid prefer highly dynamic oceanographic regions where both warm and cold-core eddies are dispensed due to the foraging opportunities that are created throughout these areas.  Warm-core eddies are preferred by this species as they exhibit convergent flow, creating favorable foraging conditions in which apex predators can thrive off of in terms of successfully catching prey.  In addition to this, squid are free-swimming animals, not looking for a specific location to call home but rather opting to utilize coral reefs, nooks, rocks, and the ocean floor to hide from prey and also hunt for their own. Residing in freshwater locations, squid can live near the surface or even dive to depths of a thousand feet, Giant Squid in particular living exclusively within trenches, making their observation an extremely rare occurrence. 

Squids hold great importance in the diets of fishes, seabirds, and marine mammals, being found in the feeding patterns of nine fish predators (Young et al., 2013).  Surprisingly, ommastrephid squid being the most preyed upon group out of all, with secondary cephalopod prey coming in forms of octopods, architeuthidae, and histioteuthis (Young et al., 2013).  Furthermore, octopods and squids dominate the diets of pelagic teleosts and provide support for these apex predators in maintaining these areas as their habitats.  Furthermore, ecological information regarding the horizontal and vertical distribution of sharks can be explained by understanding the cephalopod distribution in which they prey on, as in the Southern Ocean, cephalopods are commonly preyed upon by this predator alongside odontocetes, seals, seabirds and finally with fishes.  In examining the ecological models and available information on squids at both local and regional scales, research also provides proof that squids have an immense trophic impact on various elements of the food web, with top-down control from squids to squid prey being high (Young et al., 2013).