Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Succession concepts,
type of succession
Mechanisms of succession
Climax community
16.3 Succession becomes self-limiting as it
approaches the climax
Succession continues until the
addition of new species to the
sere and the exclusion of
established species no longer
change the environment of the
developing community.
Mature oak-hickory climax forest from old field in North Carolina: 150 yrs
Humid tropics, reach climax within 100 years from clear cut, but may take
a few more centuries to achieves a fully mature structure and species
composition.
Fire is an important
feature of many climax
communities, favoring
fire-resistant species
and excluding species
that would otherwise
dominate.
Selective grazing
1 hectare of forest
Boreal: <5
Temperate : 10-30
Tropical: 100-300
Outline (Chapter 20)
17.1 Variation in the relative abundance of species influences
concepts of biodiversity
17.2 The number of species increase with the area sampled
17.3 Large-scale patterns of diversity reflect latitude,
environmental heterogeneity, and productivity
17.4 Diversity has both regional and local components
17.5 Diversity can be understood in terms of niche relationships
17.6 Equilibrium theories of diversity balance factors that add and
remove species
17.7 Explanations for high tree species richness in the tropics
focus on forest dynamics
17.1 Variation in the relative abundance of
species influences concepts of biodiversity
Biodiversity: variation among organisms and ecological systems
at all levels, including genetic variation within populations,
morphological and functional differences between species, and
variation in biome structure and ecosystem process in both
terrestrial and aquatic systems.
Indices of biodiversity
1. Species richness: number of species that occur within the
community (simple and most general one).
2. Relative abundance: counting all individuals of each species in
a number of sample plots within a community and determining
what percentage each contributes to the total number of
individual of all species.
Can also be quantified by density, or biomass of individuals
within a sample area, by the frequency of sample plots in
which a specific species is recorded, or by the cover
(proportion of the area of habitat covered by a species)
24
species,
256
trees
10 species
Compared to 1st forest stand, this stand has less species. Also, two
species make up 83.5% of the total tree density.
Species diversity
Graphical display of attributes of community structure
1. Rank-abundance diagram: graphical way to show relative
abundance
2. Species evenness: equitable distribution of individuals among
species
Gradual slope in the rank-abundance diagram
Abundance is represented
by number of species for
birds and by NPP for plants
(Whittaker 1975).
Species diversity
Margalef’s index
D=(S-1)/ln(N)
S is species richness, N is sample size
Menhinick’s index
D=S/Sqrt(N)
S=cA^z
Power function
Z=0.20-0.35
Three grasslands in
North Carolina, USA,
the Netherlands, and
Sweden
Specie richness
increase with sample
size over small areas.
Simpson 1964.
13 communities in
northeastern US
Brad Hawkins, UC
Irvine, 2003
Published data
Precipitation is more
important in tropics
and south-temperate
regions
Species richness is correlated with energy input
into the environment
PET: potential
evapotranspiration,
amount of water that
could be evaporated from
the soil and transpired by
plants, given the average
T and humidity.
Rate of similarity
decreases with the
distance between two
samples
8 5 12
Local communities and regional species pool
Mark Bertness,
Brown 2006
Species pool: mussels, algae species
Species sorting: exposed area, mussels; protected area, algae or
mussels.
Species interactions and ecological release
From headwater
spring to a
downstream
community at
river mouth
Recap
Diversity patterns
Latitude, habitat heterogeneity, productivity
Equilibrium theory of
island biogeography:
The number of species on an
island balances regional
processes governing
immigration against local
processes governing
extinction.
Red mangrove
Experiment by Daniel Simberloff and E.O.
Wilson
Disturbance
influence species
If some
diseaster
exterminated a
part of an
island’s biota or
all of it, new
colonists would,
over time,
restore diversity
to its pre-
disturbance
equilibrium.
Erecting metal scaffolds covered with plastic sheeting over entire red
mangrove trees and resampled at regular intervals for a year.
Equilibrium theory in continental community
coexist
4. Tree species are closely matched ecologically,
0.24 m2 plots
Two treatments
Applied fungicide and
control
Thinned half of plots
to create low density
4. Random ecological drift
Stipa: C3
perennial
grass
Semi-arid
grassland in
Arizona
Competition release
Competitive release occurs when a
species expands its niche in response
to the removal of a competitor or
when a species invades an island and
expands into unoccupied habitats
Examples of competitive release
• Response of Stipa neomexicana plants
• Decline in baleen whales has allowed for
an increase in other krill-dependent
predators (penguins, seals)
Commercial whaling in Antarctic Ocean
Baleen whales: 1
million a century ago
eat Antarctic krill (4%
of body weight)
Now, less than
200,000
Other krill-dependent
predators such as
seals and penguins
have been found
greatly increased in
abundance Competition release due to the
dramatic decrease in baleen whale
population
Recap
Diversity and sampling area
S-A relationship, scales and island
Diversity patterns
Latitude, habitat heterogeneity, productivity