Ecological Succession: Crash Course Ecology #6

Available at https://youtu.be/jZKIHe2LDP8 or just youtube/google “Crash Course Ecology 6”

1. What is ecological succession?

a. Disturbances that shake up the status quo within a

community actually serve to __________________
_________________________________________
in the long run.

2. Primary succession is when organisms ____________________ an area for the

_______________________.

a. What’s an example of an organism making their living colonizing a dead place?

3. The outcome of a primary successional landscape is to ___________________________

___________________________, which develop over time as the mosses, grasses, and
tiny little plants grow, die, and decompose. Once the soils are ready, slightly bigger
plants can move in, at which point we move on to _______________________________.

4. What is contained within a climax community?

5. ________________________, or randomness, prevents us from ever knowing exactly

what a community is going to look like 100 years after a disturbance.

6. We now know that an ecosystem is in later successional stages if it has ______________

______________________.

7. What is the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis?

8. For most of the history of public land management in the

U.S., great swaths of forest were ____________________
_________________________.

9. The only constant is __________________.