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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 ...
The final or stable community in a sere is the climax community or climatic vegetation. It is self-perpetuating and in equilibrium with the physical habitat. [1] There is no net annual accumulation of organic matter in a climax community. The annual production and use of energy is balanced in such a community.
White spruce (Picea glauca) is an example of a climax species in the northern forests of North America due to its ability to adapt to resource scarce, stable conditions, it dominates Northern forest ecosystem in the absence of a disturbance. [10] Other examples of climax species in old-growth forests: Canadian hemlock; Pacific silver fir; White fir
Clements indicated that a site's climax community would reflect local climate. He conceptualized the climax community as a "superorganism" that followed a defined developmental sequence. [2] Early ecological succession theory maintained that the directional shifts from one stage of succession to the next were induced by the plants themselves. [1]
The cyclic model of succession was proposed in 1947 by British ecologist Alexander Watt.In a seminal paper on vegetation patterns in grass, heath, and bog communities, [4] Watt describes the plant community is a regenerating entity consisting of a "space-time mosaic" of species, whose cyclic behavior can be characterized by patch dynamics.
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 ...
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An example of such "whole-community" facilitation is substrate stabilization of cobble beach plant communities in Rhode Island, US, by smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). [6] Large beds of cordgrass buffer wave action, thus allowing the establishment and persistence of a community of less disturbance-tolerant annual and perennial plants ...