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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]
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 ...
Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. [1] [2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be ...
A pyramid of biomass shows the relationship between biomass and trophic level by quantifying the biomass present at each trophic level of an ecological community at a particular time. It is a graphical representation of biomass (total amount of living or organic matter in an ecosystem) present in unit area in different trophic levels.
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 ]
Although the characteristics of any ecological system are susceptible to changes, during a defined period of time, some remain constant, oscillate, reach a fixed point or present other type of behavior that can be described as stable. [13] This multitude of trends can be labeled by different types of ecological stability.
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.