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Association (ecology)
In phytosociology and community ecology an association is a type of community (ecology), ecological community with a predictable species composition and consistent physiognomy (structural appearance) which occurs in a particular habitat type. The term was first coined by Alexander von Humboldt and formalised by the International Botanical Congress in 1910. An association can be viewed as a real, integrated entity shaped either by species interactions or by similar habitat requirements, or it can be viewed as merely a common point along a continuum. The former view was championed by American ecologist Frederic Clements, who viewed the association as a whole that was more than the sum of its parts, and by Josias Braun-Blanquet, a Swiss-born phytosociologist. On the other end of the argument was American ecologist Henry Gleason, who saw these groupings of plant species as a coincidence produced by the "fluctuation and fortuitous immigration of plants, and an equally fluctuating and va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phytosociology
Phytosociology, also known as phytocoenology or simply plant sociology, is the study of groups of species of plant that are usually found together. Phytosociology aims to Empirical evidence, empirically describe the vegetative environment of a given territory. A specific community of plants is considered a social unit, the product of definite conditions, present and past, and can exist only when such conditions are met. In phyto-sociology, such a unit is known as a phytocoenosis (or phytocoenose). A phytocoenosis is more commonly known as a plant community, and consists of the sum of all plants in a given area. It is a subset of a biocoenosis, which consists of all organisms in a given area. More strictly speaking, a phytocoenosis is a set of plants in area that are interacting with each other through competition or other ecological processes. Coenoses are not equivalent to ecosystems, which consist of organisms and the physical environment that they interact with. A phytocoensis ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Community Ecology
In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization". Community ecology or synecology is the study of the interactions between species in communities on many spatial and temporal scales, including the distribution, structure, abundance, demography, and interactions of coexisting populations. The primary focus of community ecology is on the interactions between populations as determined by specific genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. It is important to understand the origin, maintenance, and consequences of species diversity when evaluating community ecology. Comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Community (ecology)
In ecology, a community is a group or association (ecology), association of Population ecology, populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage. The term community has a variety of uses. In its simplest form it refers to groups of organisms in a specific place or time, for example, "the fish community of Lake Ontario before industrialization". Community ecology or synecology is the study of the interactions between species in communities on many spatial and temporal scales, including the distribution, structure, abundance, demography, and biological interaction, interactions of coexisting populations. The primary focus of community ecology is on the interactions between populations as determined by specific genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. It is important to understand the origin, maintenance, and consequences ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species Composition
Relative species abundance is a component of biodiversity and is a measure of how common or rare a species is relative to other species in a defined location or community.Hubbell, S. P. 2001. ''The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography''. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. Relative abundance is the percent composition of an organism of a particular kind relative to the total number of organisms in the area. Relative species abundance (ecology), abundances tend to conform to specific patterns that are among the best-known and most-studied patterns in macroecology. Different populations in a community exist in relative proportions; this idea is known as relative abundance. Introduction Relative species abundance Relative species abundance and species richness describe key elements of biodiversity. Relative species abundance refers to how common or rare a species is relative to other species in a given location or community.McGill, B. J., Etienne R. S., Gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Type
In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, habitat generalist species are able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species require a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior of a stem, a rotten log, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism in science, science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguistics, linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botany, botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern Earth's magnetic field, geomagnetic and meteorology, meteorological monitoring. Humboldt and Carl Ritter are both regarded as the founders of modern geography as they established it as an independent scientific discipline. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a non-Spanish European scientific point of view. His des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Botanical Congress
International Botanical Congress (IBC) is an international meeting of Botany, botanists in all scientific fields, authorized by the International Association of Botanical and Mycological Societies (IABMS) and held every six years, with the location rotating between different continents. The current numbering system for the congresses starts from the year 1900; the XX IBC was in Madrid, Spain, July 2024. The XXI IBC is planned to be in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2029. The IBC has the power to alter the ICN (International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants), which was renamed from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) at the XVIII IBC. Formally the power resides with the Plenary Session; in practice this approves the decisions of the Nomenclature Section. The Nomenclature Section meets before the actual Congress and deals with all proposals to modify the Code: this includes ratifying recommendations from sub-committees on conserved name, conserv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederic Clements
Frederic Edward Clements (September 16, 1874 – July 26, 1945) was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of both plant ecology and vegetation succession. Biography Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, he studied botany at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1894 and obtaining a doctorate in 1898. One of his teachers was botanist Charles Bessey, who inspired Clements to research topics such as microscopy, plant physiology, and laboratory experimentation. He was also classmate of Willa Cather and Roscoe Pound. While at the University of Nebraska, he met Edith Gertrude Schwartz (1874–1971), also a botanist and ecologist, and they were married in 1899. In 1905 he was appointed full professor at the University of Nebraska, but left in 1907 to head the botany department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. From 1917 to 1941 he was employed as an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., where he was able to carry out dedicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josias Braun-Blanquet
Josias Braun-Blanquet (3 August 1884 – 20 September 1980) was an influential phytosociologist and botanist. Braun-Blanquet was born in Chur, Switzerland, and died in Montpellier, France. Biography In Josias Braun-Blanquet's dissertation, supervised by Charles Flahault, he worked on the phytosociology of the southern Cévennes. Between 1918 and 1938 he edited the exsiccata ''Flora Rhaetica exsiccata'' distributing plant specimens with detailed information on their habitat and ecological demands. Subsequently he established the modern way of classifying vegetation according to floristic composition. This is what makes him one of the most influential botanists until today. Braun-Blanquet's way of classifying a plant community uses the scientific name of its most characteristic species as namesake, changing the ending of the generic name to "-etum" and treating the specific epithet as adjective. Thus, a particular type of mesotrophic grassland widespread in western Europe and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Gleason
Henry Allan Gleason (1882–1975) was an American ecologist, botanist, and taxonomist. He was known for his endorsement of the individualistic or open community concept of ecological succession, and his opposition to Frederic Clements's concept of the climax state of an ecosystem. His ideas were largely dismissed during his working life, leading him to move into plant taxonomy, but found favour late in the twentieth century. Life and work Gleason was born in Dalton City, Illinois, and after undergraduate and master's work at the University of Illinois earned a PhD from Columbia University in Biology in 1906. He held faculty positions at the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan, before returning to the East Coast, to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York, where he remained for the rest of his career, until 1950. In Gleason's early ecological research on the vegetation of Illinois, around 1909–1912, he worked large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Community
A plant community is a collection or Association (ecology), association of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The components of each plant community are influenced by soil type, topography, climate and human disturbance. In many cases there are several soil types present within a given plant community. This is because the soil type within an area is influenced by two factors, the rate at which water infiltrates or exits (via evapotranspiration) the soil, as well as the rate at which organic matter (any carbon-based compound within the environment, such as decaying plant matter) enters or decays from the soil. Plant communities are studied substantially by ecologists, due to providing information on the effects of dispersal, tolerance to environmental conditions, and response to disturbance of a variety of plant species, information valuable to the comprehe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species Aggregate
In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each other, further blurring any distinctions. Terms that are sometimes used synonymously but have more precise meanings are cryptic species for two or more species hidden under one species name, sibling species for two (or more) species that are each other's closest relative, and species flock for a group of closely related species that live in the same habitat. As informal taxonomic ranks, species group, species aggregate, macrospecies, and superspecies are also in use. Two or more taxa that were once considered conspecific (of the same species) may later be subdivided into infraspecific taxa (taxa within a species, such as plant varieties), which may be a complex ranking but it is not a species complex. In most cases, a species complex is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
