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Shelford's law of tolerance is a principle developed by American zoologist Victor Ernest Shelford in 1911. It states that an organism 's success is based on a complex set of conditions and that each organism has a certain minimum, maximum, and optimum environmental factor or combination of factors that determine success. [ 1 ]
Tolerance Model. In this case, new pioneer species neither inhibit nor facilitate the growth and success of other species. The sequences of succession are thus entirely dependent on life-history characteristics such as the specific amount of energy a species allocates to growth. [3]
Ecology; Ecology addresses the full scale of life, from tiny bacteria to processes that span the entire planet. Ecologists study many diverse and complex relations among species, such as predation and pollination. The diversity of life is organized into different habitats, from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems.
Primary succession is the beginning step of ecological succession where species known as pioneer species colonize an uninhabited site, which usually occurs in an environment devoid of vegetation and other organisms. In contrast, secondary succession occurs on substrates that previously supported vegetation before an ecological disturbance. This ...
Ecological threshold is the point at which a relatively small change or disturbance in external conditions causes a rapid change in an ecosystem. When an ecological threshold has been passed, the ecosystem may no longer be able to return to its state by means of its inherent resilience .
An ideal examples of r-selected groups are algae. Based on the contradictory characteristics of both of these examples, areas of occasional disturbance allow both r and K species to benefit by residing in the same area. The ecological effect on species relationships is therefore supported by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis.
In ecology, the theory of alternative stable states (sometimes termed alternate stable states or alternative stable equilibria) predicts that ecosystems can exist under multiple "states" (sets of unique biotic and abiotic conditions). These alternative states are non-transitory and therefore considered stable over ecologically-relevant timescales.
Ecological efficiency may be anywhere from 5% to 20% depending on how efficient or inefficient that ecosystem is. [ 8 ] [ 1 ] This decrease in efficiency occurs because organisms need to perform cellular respiration to survive, and energy is lost as heat when cellular respiration is performed. [ 1 ]