Community

Dynamics
What is a Community?
 Ecological communities are composed
of populations which share a defined
area and interact.
 Community ecology examines how
species interactions influence
community structure and function.
Communities are Dynamic
 Community structure is not static, but
changes over time as a result of things
like the arrival and loss of species, and
the effects of outside forces such as
fires and floods. 
 Dynamic – constantly changing
Disturbance & Succession
 Disturbance
and succession are two
common causes of change in
community structure.
Disturbance
 Disturbance is "any relatively discrete
event in time that disrupts ecosystem,
community, or population structure and
changes resources, substrate availability, or
the physical environment.”
 This broad definition covers nearly anything
that creates open space, including
hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, footprints,
and last but not least, fire. Disturbances
result from forces originating outside the
community.
Succession
 Succession is the repeatable change in
community composition through time
following a disturbance.
Fire in Yellowstone
 Fire is a natural occurrence in the
Yellowstone ecosystem.
 Many, if not all, of the species in these
communities are fire-adapted and slowly
die out if fire is excluded from the
landscape.
Succession in Yellowstone
 After 1988 fires,
studies of succession
past & present.
 In 1988, most trees
were the same age –
regrowth after a big
fire in the 1700s.
 Regrowth follows a
pattern - succession

1988
Succession in Yellowstone

1991
Succession in Yellowstone

1992
Succession in Yellowstone

1997
Succession in
Yellowstone
 Lodgepole pines require
fire to reproduce.
 Cones don’t open to
release seeds until
exposed to a fire.
 Burned areas soon have
lodgepole seedlings
sprouting.
 Annuals common early
on, shrubs & trees take
longer to grow, but
eventually the pines are
dominant once more.
Processes Driving Succession
 Self-thinning – lots of seedling
lodgepole pines begin growing, naturally
thin out as the trees grow.
Processes Driving Succession
 Lifehistory trade-offs
 Early succession traits
 Roots or seeds that suvive or even require fire.
 Light seeds float on the wind into burned area.
 Late succession traits
 Slow growers
 May require conditions created by early
successional species.
Life History Traits
 The differences in physiology and
behavior that make each species well
suited to grow in particular
environments are called the life
history traits of the species.
Life History Traits
 There are often trade-offs involved
with life history traits. For instance, it
may not be possible to have a
physiology that allows rapid growth in
both low and high-light environments.
Life History
Traits
 Species that do
well in early
succession often
have different life
history traits than
those that appear
in late succession.
Types of Succession
 Primary succession – Starting from
bare rock.
 After volcano erupts
 After a glacier recedes
 Secondarysuccession – Growth has
been removed, but soil & seed bank is
intact.
 Abandoned agricultural field
 Fires
Three Models for Succession
 Facilitation
 Inhibition
 Tolerance
Facilitation
 Barren ground is uninhabitable by
all but the most stress-tolerant of
colonists (small, yellow flower).
 Over time, early stress-tolerant
colonists make the environment
more suitable for successive species
(such as the purple flower) by
increasing nutrient availability,
developing soils, reducing pH, or
providing shade from the sun and
shelter from the wind.
 This sequence continues until the
most competitively dominant
species (here the tall orange flower)
no longer facilitate the invasion and
growth of any other species.
Inhibition
 All species arriving on an unoccupied site
can survive. Thus, the initial community
composition is simply a function of who
gets there first.
 Once a colonist becomes established,
it inhibits growth of subsequent arrivals
by monopolizing space and/or other
resources.
 Only when space and/or resources are
released through the death or decay of
dominant residents can new colonists
invade and grow.
 Because short-lived early species die more
frequently, succession slowly progresses
from short-lived to long-lived species.
 Tolerance
 Allspecies arriving on an unoccupied site
can survive. Thus, the initial community
composition is simply a function of who
gets there first.
 Species that appear later simply arrived
later or arrived early but grew more
slowly.
 Late arriving species tolerate the
presence of early species and grow
despite the presence of early-
successional species because they are
better competitors for light and nutrients.
Over time, late-successional species
exclude other species.
 Early-successional species have no effect
on late-successional species.
Climax Community
 Ifthere are no more disturbances, the
community will eventually reach a
stable state – the climax community.
 An equilibrium state
 Something almost always provides a
disturbance – keeps the community out
of equilibrium.
Fire Creates Habitat Diversity
 Smaller burned patches were colonized
more quickly and tended to have
greater forb, grass, and total cover then
more severely burned sites.
 These results indicate that rare years
characterized by widespread fires of
different sizes and intensities create
much of the habitat diversity in the
Park.
 The
intermediate
disturbance
hypothesis
predicts that the
greatest diversity
in the community
will be found with
intermediate
levels of
disturbance.
Food Chains
& Indirect
Effects
Food Chains
 Species can be grouped according to
where in the community they obtain
their food, and groups can be linked
together to form a food chain, where
each link comprises a different trophic
level. 
Food Chains
 Primary Producers – Plants & algae
that make food through photosynthesis.
 Herbivores – Feed on primary
producers
 Carnivores (predators) – Feed on
herbivores.
 Omnivores – Feed on plants & animals.
Yellowstone Food Chain
 Aspen ElkWolves
 Wolves removed
 Elk hunted, but then allowed to rebound
 Reintroduce wolves to keep elk
populations in balance
 Controversy
Aspens
 Quaking aspens are the primary
hardwood in forests around Yellowstone.
 They have been declining. Why?
 Fire suppression – fires may provide ideal
conditions for aspens to sprout.
 Elk herbivory – too many elk may feed on
saplings before they have a chance to get
established.
Top-Down Control
 Elk
controlling density of aspen is an
example of top-down control.
 Population is controlled by the trophic
level above.
Top-Down Control
 Marine example:
 Sea urchins feed on kelp
 Addingurchins reduces kelp density
 Removing urchins increases kelp density
Trophic Cascade
 Adding a third link in the food chain:
 Otters feed on urchins
 Urchin population declines
 Kelp increases
Trophic Cascade
 Adding a fourth link in the food chain:
 Orcas feeding on sea otters
 Otters decline
 Urchins increase
 Kelp decline
Behavioral Cascade
 In a traditional trophic cascade,
predators actually reduce the population
of herbivores.
 Wolves reduce the elk population
somewhat, but mostly they change elk
behavior.
 Hide & feed in pine forest rather than
being in open feeding on aspen.
Predation Risk
 Prey species,
like elk or
gerbils, will
forage more
in areas
where they
feel safe
from
predation.
Ecosystem Engineers
 Animals at different trophic levels effect
community structure through feeding.
 Ecosystem engineers affect the
ecosystem itself – indirect effects on
community structure.
Ecosystem Engineers
 Inorder for an organism to be
considered an ecosystem engineer, it
must alter the availability of
environmental resources. Corals are
considered autogenic ecosystem
engineers because their physical
structure alters ocean currents and
siltation rates, creating conditions that
many reef communities require.
Ecosystem Engineers
 Ecosystem
engineers can also
alter the
environment by
directly
redistributing or
transforming living
and non-living
materials.
Beavers & Willow - Yellowstone
 In
Yellowstone, elk
herbivory also
reduced willow
density.
 Beavers
disappeared.
 Would returning
beavers be
beneficial?
Top-Down vs Bottom-Up
Control
 Some ecologists have suggested that
communities are not so much structured by
consumers as by resource availability.
 Support for this suggestion comes from
farms where additions of nutrients like
nitrogen and phosphorus have successfully
increased crop yields. Ecologists taking a
bottom-up perspective hypothesize that
organisms on each trophic level are resource
limited.
Bottom-Up Control
 When leaf litter in
the stream was
limited, primary
consumers and
predators
declined.
Food Chain Length
 What limits the size of
food chains?
 Productivity- more
producers = more links
 Ecosystem size –
bigger lake = more links
 Productive-space –
both aspects important.
Community
Stability
Resistance
 How resistant is the community to
disturbance?
 How big of a change did the disturbance
cause?
 The term resistance is used to describe
how much the community changes due
to a particular disturbance. More
resistant communities will change less. 
 Disturbance specific
Return Time
 How quickly did the community recover
from the change?
 Return time is the amount of time it
takes for the community to stop
changing (reach an equilibrium) after
the disturbance. 
Resilience
 How closely did the post-recovery
community resemble the pre-
disturbance community?
Response to Disturbance
 Communities differ in their response to
disturbance in each of the three ways
you saw in the simulation. The response
can also change depending on what the
disturbance is. For instance, the size of
a disturbance affects recovery time. The
larger the disturbance, the longer (in
general) you expect recovery to take.
Persistence
 The overall degree to which a
community stays the same over time,
especially (but not exclusively) after
disturbances, is called the
community's persistence.
Alternative Stable States
 Differentpotential communities in the
same place are called alternative
stable states and occur when more
than one type of community can exist in
a particular environment.
Why are some communities
more stable than others?
 The diversity-stability
hypothesis argues that species-rich
communities are more stable.
Why are some communities
more stable than others?
 Food web
theory suggests that
communities with
higher
 connectance(i.e.,
with many species
interacting
trophically) should be
more stable.
Keystone Species
 Keystone
species, which
have a larger
impact on
community
stability than
would be expected
based on relative
abundance.
Dominant Species
 Dominant species, which have a large
impact due to their high abundance.