22: Community Structure

Community: All populations of species living together in a particular area.

The community approach — Emphasizes the diversity and relative abundances of different kinds of organisms living together in the same place.

Other used of “community”

• Bird “community”

• - Fish “community”

• - Bird “assemblage”

• Fish “assemblage”

• Community: All populations of species living together in a particular area.

• Assemblage: All populations of a type of organism living together in a particular area.

• Local Guild: Populations grouped by the resources they consume that live together in a particular area.

• Distinct boundaries or Ecotones: A boundary created by sharp changes in environmental conditions over a relatively short distance, accompanied by a major change in the composition of species

  • Due to human activities

• Interdependent vs. Independent communities

  • Are communities always composed by the same species?

• Interdependent communities

  • - Species depend on each other -

  • Species play specific roles -

  • Communities as “Superorganisms”

• Independent communities -

  • Species live in the same place, due to their adaptations -

  • No interdependence

• Meta-Communities Definition:

  • A set of local communities linked by the dispersal of one or more of their constituent species (Leibold et al. 2004).