Plant Ecology: Succession and Community Assembly

Flashcards covering vocabulary related to plant ecology, succession, and community assembly.

Ecological succession

The process by which plant communities replace (or 'succeed') each other over time.

Community

A set of populations of species living together at the same time and place.

Community assembly

The processes that determine the identity and abundance of species within ecological communities; the study of how ecological communities are formed.

Ecological succession

The gradual changes in the structure and composition of an ecological community over time, which result in a community being replaced by another, different community.

Climax community

The final, stable stage of succession, where the species composition stays relatively constant over time.

Primary succession

The establishment and development of a biological community in an environment where previously no organisms lived and where there is no soil.

Pioneer species

The species that initiate primary succession by breaking down rocks and slowly creating soil.

Secondary succession

The natural process of vegetation development that occurs in an area where the existing community or ecosystems has been seriously damaged or destroyed.

Species pool

The species which can potentially colonize the studied community.

Speciation

The process by which new species arise from existing ones.

Dispersal

The spatial movement of organisms.

Ecological selection

Interactions of organisms with each other and with the environment, including both environmental filtering and limiting similarity.

Drift

Random changes in species abundances.

Species pool

The suite of possible colonising species for a local site under study.

Filtering concept

What subset of the local species pool will be actually present in a given community is determined by environmental filtering.

Regional species pool

Created through speciation, extinction and migration of species over evolutionary time and defined at the relatively large biogeographical scale.

Habitat-specific species pool

Includes only those species from the regional pool that can live in the habitat of interest.

Community species pool

The set of species actually existing in the target community.

Dispersal limitation

Species are not present at all sites that are ecologically suitable for them.

Environmental filtering

Strong environmental constraint mean that only species with certain traits can survive and reproduce in the given environment.

Limiting similarity

There is a limit in the overlap in resource use (or more generally in niches) between species that can coexist.

Priority effect

The impact of a particular species on community assembly and development due to that particular species being the first to arrive at a site.

Novel ecosystems

Ecosystems with species compositions and species abundances that have not occurred previously.

Hybrid ecosystem

If the changes compared to the original environmental conditions and species composition are severe but reversible to the historical state.

Novel ecosystem

If the changes compared to the original environmental conditions and species composition are so severe that the ecosystem is irreversible to the historical state.