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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.
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 ...
The researchers compared the genomes of six species of apes, including humans, and 15 species of monkeys with tails to pinpoint key differences between the groups. Our ancient animal ancestors had ...
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 .
Early ecological succession theory maintained that the directional shifts from one stage of succession to the next were induced by the plants themselves. [1] In this sense, succession theory implicitly recognized priority effects; the prior arrival of certain species had important impacts on future community composition.
[1] [2] As ecological succession sets in, a forest will slowly regenerate towards its former state within the succession (climax or any intermediate stage), provided that all outer parameters (climate, soil fertility availability of nutrients, animal migration paths, air pollution or the absence thereof, etc.) remain unchanged.
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 ...