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Ecological succession is driven by feedbacks between plants and their environment. [25] As plants grow following a disturbance, they change their environment, for example by creating shade, attracting seed dispersers, contributing organic matter to the soil, changing the availability of soil nutrients, creating microhabitats, and buffering ...
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 ...
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.
Initially, Adelbert von Chamisso (studying salps, colonial marine animals between 1815 and 1818 [10]) and Japetus Steenstrup (studying the development of trematodes in 1842, and also tunicates and cnidarians) described the succession of differently organized generations (sexual and asexual) in animals as "alternation of generations". [11]
A bear with a salmon. Interspecific interactions such as predation are a key aspect of community 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 remainder is consumed by animals while still alive and enters the plant-based trophic system. After plants and animals die, the organic matter contained in them enters the detritus-based trophic system. [15] Ecosystem respiration is the sum of respiration by all living organisms (plants, animals, and decomposers) in the ecosystem. [16]
Thus, the nature of species interactions may shift with environmental conditions. Facilitation has a greater effect on plant interactions under environmental stress than competition. [9] Another example is the positive effects of facilitation on desert plants that face the effects of rising aridification.
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.