Related Research Articles
An ecosystem consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the system through photosynthesis and is incorporated into plant tissue. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and microbes.
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material.
In ecology, edge effects are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats. Areas with small habitat fragments exhibit especially pronounced edge effects that may extend throughout the range. As the edge effects increase, the boundary habitat allows for greater biodiversity.
This glossary of ecology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts in ecology and related fields. For more specific definitions from other glossaries related to ecology, see Glossary of biology, Glossary of evolutionary biology, and Glossary of environmental science.
In scientific ecology, climax community or climatic climax community is a historic term for a community of plants, animals, and fungi which, through the process of ecological succession in the development of vegetation in an area over time, have reached a steady state. This equilibrium was thought to occur because the climax community is composed of species best adapted to average conditions in that area. The term is sometimes also applied in soil development. Nevertheless, it has been found that a "steady state" is more apparent than real, particularly across long timescales. Notwithstanding, it remains a useful concept.
Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. The time scale can be decades or more or less.
An ecosystem engineer is any species that creates, significantly modifies, maintains or destroys a habitat. These organisms can have a large impact on species richness and landscape-level heterogeneity of an area. As a result, ecosystem engineers are important for maintaining the health and stability of the environment they are living in. Since all organisms impact the environment they live in one way or another, it has been proposed that the term "ecosystem engineers" be used only for keystone species whose behavior very strongly affects other organisms.
The diversity of species and genes in ecological communities affects the functioning of these communities. These ecological effects of biodiversity in turn are affected by both climate change through enhanced greenhouse gases, aerosols and loss of land cover, and biological diversity, causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species and local populations. The current rate of extinction is sometimes considered a mass extinction, with current species extinction rates on the order of 100 to 1000 times as high as in the past.
Primary succession is the beginning step of ecological succession after an extreme disturbance, which usually occurs in an environment devoid of vegetation and other organisms. These environments are typically lacking in soil, as disturbances like lava flow or retreating glaciers shred the environment of nutrients.
In ecology, an ecosystem is said to possess ecological stability if it is capable of returning to its equilibrium state after a perturbation or does not experience unexpected large changes in its characteristics across time. Although the terms community stability and ecological stability are sometimes used interchangeably, community stability refers only to the characteristics of communities. It is possible for an ecosystem or a community to be stable in some of their properties and unstable in others. For example, a vegetation community in response to a drought might conserve biomass but lose biodiversity.
Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role as an ecosystem process. Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vitality and renewal. Many plant species in fire-affected environments use fire to germinate, establish, or to reproduce. Wildfire suppression not only endangers these species, but also the animals that depend upon them.
In ecology, a disturbance is a temporary change in environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem. Disturbances often act quickly and with great effect, to alter the physical structure or arrangement of biotic and abiotic elements. A disturbance can also occur over a long period of time and can impact the biodiversity within an ecosystem.
In ecology, allogenic succession is succession driven by the abiotic components of an ecosystem. In contrast, autogenic succession is driven by the biotic components of the ecosystem. An allogenic succession can be initiated in a number of ways which can include:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ecology:
In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization".
Ecological dominance is the degree to which one or several species have a major influence controlling the other species in their ecological community or make up more of the biomass. Both the composition and abundance of species within an ecosystem can be affected by the dominant species present.
Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the effects of environmental factors upon the abundance of plants, and the interactions among plants and between plants and other organisms. Examples of these are the distribution of temperate deciduous forests in North America, the effects of drought or flooding upon plant survival, and competition among desert plants for water, or effects of herds of grazing animals upon the composition of grasslands.
In ecology, a priority effect refers to the impact that a particular species can have on community development as a result of its prior arrival at a site. There are two basic types of priority effects: inhibitory and facilitative. An inhibitory priority effect occurs when a species that arrives first at a site negatively affects a species that arrives later by reducing the availability of space or resources. In contrast, a facilitative priority effect occurs when a species that arrives first at a site alters abiotic or biotic conditions in ways that positively affect a species that arrives later. Priority effects are a central and pervasive element of ecological community development that have significant implications for natural systems and ecological restoration efforts.
Ecological succession can be understood as a process of changing species composition within a community due to an ecological disturbance, and varies largely according to the initial disturbance prompting the succession. Joseph Connell and Ralph Slatyer further developed the understanding of successional mechanisms in their 1977 paper and proposed that there were 3 main modes of successional development. These sequences could be understood in the context of the specific life-history theories of the individual species within an ecological community.
The root microbiome is the dynamic community of microorganisms associated with plant roots. Because they are rich in a variety of carbon compounds, plant roots provide unique environments for a diverse assemblage of soil microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and archaea. The microbial communities inside the root and in the rhizosphere are distinct from each other, and from the microbial communities of bulk soil, although there is some overlap in species composition.
References
- ↑ Cowles, Henry Chandler (1899). "The Ecological Relations of the Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan. Part I.-Geographical Relations of the Dune Floras". Botanical Gazette. 27 (2): 95–117. ISSN 0006-8071.
- ↑ Cowles, Henry C. (1911). "The Causes of Vegetational Cycles". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 1: 3–20. doi:10.2307/2560843. ISSN 0004-5608.
- ↑ Finegan, Bryan (1984). "Forest succession". Nature. 312 (5990): 109–114. doi:10.1038/312109a0. ISSN 1476-4687
- ↑ Connell, Joseph H.; Slatyer, Ralph O. (1977). "Mechanisms of Succession in Natural Communities and Their Role in Community Stability and Organization". The American Naturalist. 111 (982): 1119–1144. ISSN 0003-0147.
- ↑ Martin, Elizabeth; Hine, Robert (2008). "Succession". A Dictionary of Biology (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920462-5 . Retrieved 12 January 2011.
- ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 20 October 2008.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ↑ Van der Putten, W. H.; Mortimer, S. R.; Hedlund, K.; Van Dijk, C.; Brown, V. K.; Lepä, J.; Rodriguez-Barrueco, C.; Roy, J.; Diaz Len, T. A.; Gormsen, D.; Korthals, G. W.; Lavorel, S.; Regina, I. Santa; Smilauer, P. (2000-07-01). "Plant species diversity as a driver of early succession in abandoned fields: a multi-site approach". Oecologia. 124 (1): 91–99. Bibcode:2000Oecol.124...91V. doi:10.1007/s004420050028. ISSN 1432-1939. PMID 28308417. S2CID 38703575.
 | This ecology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |