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One example of primary succession takes place after a volcano has erupted. The lava flows into the ocean and hardens into new land. The resulting barren land is first colonized by pioneer organisms, like algae, which pave the way for later, less hardy plants, such as hardwood trees, by facilitating pedogenesis, especially through the biotic acceleration of weathering and the addition of ...
Ecological succession is the process of change in the species that make up an ecological community over time. The process of succession occurs either after the initial colonization of a newly created habitat, or after a disturbance substantially alters a pre-existing habitat. [ 1 ]
For example, we can examine succession in the Loess Plateau in China. In the graph on page 995 of the paper "Plant Traits and Soil Chemical Variables During a Secondary Vegetation Succession in Abandoned Fields on the Loess Plateau" by Wang (2002), we can see the initial dominance of the Artemisia scoparia, the pioneer species.
Human activities have introduced disturbances into ecosystems worldwide on a large scale, resulting in widespread range expansion and rapid evolution of disturbance-adapted species. [7] Agricultural practices create novel ecosystems, known as agroecosystems , which are colonized by plant species adapted to disturbance and enforce evolutionary ...
An example may be in a beach dune system where the impact of the human race has caused footpath erosion to occur, affecting the vegetation so that feet trampling on the dune plants eventually destroys them. The uplands of Northern England were once covered by deciduous woodland. Some heather would have been present, but in relatively small amounts.
A seral community is an intermediate stage found in ecological succession in an ecosystem advancing towards its climax community. In many cases more than one seral stage evolves until climax conditions are attained. [1] A prisere is a collection of seres making up the development of an area from non-vegetated surfaces to a climax community.
For example, cooperative hunting and the ability to more easily find mates, both influenced by population density, are component Allee effects, as they influence individual fitness of the population. At low population density, these component Allee effects would add up to produce an overall demographic Allee effect (increased fitness with ...
Cyclic succession is a pattern of vegetation change in which in a small number of species tend to replace each other over time in the absence of large-scale disturbance. Observations of cyclic replacement have provided evidence against traditional Clementsian views of an end-state climax community with stable species compositions .