Q4: Community Organization

Question 1

What are the environmental stress models of community regulation?

Answer 1

Menge and Sutherland proposed that three processes determine community organization: physical disturbance, predation and competition, which has varying larval recruitment.

Question 2

What are assumptions of this model?

Answer 2

Food web complexity decreases with increasing environmental stress.

Question 3

What does the model predict for communities with high recruitment?

Answer 3

1. In stressful environments, herbivores have little effect because they are rare or absent [due to plants more direct response to environmental stress]
2. In moderately stressful environments, consumers are ineffective at controlling plants, and plants attain high densities. Competition among plants becomes the dominant interaction.
3. In benign environments, consumers control plant numbers, and plant competition is rare. Predation is the dominant biological interaction.

Question 4

Provide two examples of support for the model in marine communities.

Answer 4

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Question 5

Discuss how recruitment and propagule supply affect the predictions, as well as how other species interactions, such as facilitation, map onto this model/framework.

Answer 5

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Question 6

How does this model integrate previous theories of community organization and structure that came before it?

Answer 6

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