4.3: Community Ecology
- Page ID
- 108091
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- Discuss the predator-prey cycle
- Discuss the many levels of interaction such as predation, herbivory, competition, and symbiosis between living organisms within a population, within a community, and within an ecosystem
- Predict patterns of succession following natural and anthropogenic disturbance
This 11.5-minute video summarizes much of the content of Unit 4.3
Question after watching: What are some of the strategies provided in the video that organisms use to reduce competition?
- 4.3.1: Introduction to Community Ecology
- Populations rarely, if ever, live in isolation from populations of other species. In most cases, numerous species share a habitat. The interactions between these populations play a major role in regulating population growth and abundance. All populations occupying the same habitat form a community: populations inhabiting a specific area at the same time. The number of species occupying the same habitat and their relative abundance is known as species diversity.
- 4.3.2: Antagonistic Interactions
- Antagonistic interactions are those where at least one individual experiences lowered fitness as an outcome.
- 4.3.3: Symbiotic Interactions
- Symbiotic relationships, or symbioses (plural), are close interactions between individuals of different species over an extended period of time that impact the abundance and distribution of the associating populations.
- 4.3.4: Ecological Succession
- The trajectory of successional change can be influenced by site conditions, by the type of events initiating succession, by the interactions of the species present, and by more stochastic factors such as availability of propagules or weather conditions at the time of disturbance.
- 4.3.5: Community Structure and Dynamics
- Disturbance typically increases diversity at the landscape scale, but intense disturbances can initially decrease diversity at the site scale. This scale-dependent process can be described with different diversity metrics, some of which we will explore in this chapter; others will be introduced later.
Thumbnail: A bumblebee pollinating a flower, one example of an ecosystem service. (CC BY-SA3.0; ).