Chapter 1 Flashcards
Community Ecology
The branch of science that is focused squarely on understanding Earth’s biodiversity, including the generation, maintenance, and distribution of the diversity of life in space and time.
What is a community?
A group of species that occur together in space and time
Any limits on space, time, and number of species are actually arbitrary.
Who were the first community ecologists?
The first community ecologists were botanists who recognized the response of plants to spatial and temporal variations in the environment.
Frederic Clements
Pioneer of North American Plant Ecology
Supported the idea of the “superorganism”
Proposed the idea of succession
Describe the idea of the “superorganism”
it is the hypothesis that many species of organisms can make up one larger organism
What is the idea of succession
It states that all environments progress in a predictable manner to a climax community (Clements, 1916)
Who is Stephen Forbes?
- An ecologist that studied many aspects from entomology (study of insects) to limnology (study of lakes)
- who also supported the idea of “superorganisms” and applied this idea to lake communities.
- Published The Lake as a Microcosm (1887)
- He belongs to a group of early ecologists who focused on classifying plant and lake communities as specific ‘types’
What did Frobes book -The Lake as a Microcosm state
states that all organisms in a lake function together to create a system in balance.
What was the contrary opinion to superorganisms?
Individualistic concept: individual species independently respond to environmental conditions (this is more continuous).
Who is Henry Gleason?
- conducted on natural plant populations in Illinois.
- originally accepted Clement’s ideas about succession, but then after 1918 expressed doubts
- Ultimately supported the individualistic hypothesis, which he asserted that each species responds in a unique way and that there are not sharp definitions to communities, distributions and abundances differ from place to place, which forms ecological gradients.
Who is Arthur Tansley?
- English botanist
- founded a journal called New Phytologist
- introduced the concept of ecosystem into biology
- directly oposed Clements aka believed in the individualistic concept
- published “The use and abuse of vegetational terms and concepts”
Super-organism concept:
groups of species are tightly associated and are replaced by other groups of tightly associated species (this is more discrete)
Individualistic concept
individual species independently respond to environmental conditions (this is more continuous)
Who is Charles Elton?
- an animal biologist
- observed Arctic animal populations
- opposed the “balance of nature concept” by Forbes and others
- discussed ideas such as food webs, ecological niches, and community diversity
- proposed the idea that communities have “limited membership”
explain elton’s - communities have “limited membership”
that many species could exist in an area, but few are able to do so.
