In: Biology
You travel to a continent that you’ve never traveled to before and you decide that you want to start studying community ecology on this continent. First determine whether the community that you are studying is considered an equilibrium (or stable) community. Describe what things you would study, why you would study them, and how understanding that would help inform whether the community was in equilibrium.
The community is considered to be a stable community if the size of population of all species remain constant and should be in a state of climax community. According to Clements, a stable / climax community is defined as the final, terminal, stable community developed in the process of succession that maintains itself for over longer period in equilibrium with the prevailing environmental conditions. Resistance and Resilence are the components of stability for a community. The environmental factors should be in balance. It should have the following characteristics
S.No. | Form | Characteristics |
1 | Unity | All species are to be in the form of an organised unit. The life or growth forms of plants indicate its climate. |
2 | stability | The community to be stable with the climate. The climax community should not be replaced through competition. The community should have few characteristic dominant species. |
3 | Origin and phylogenetic relations | The stable community should be treated as organism in terms of birth, growth, development and maturity. The developmental stages of the cmmunity should have their own characteristics, reflecting the type of climate. As organism changing with age the climax communities should undergo changes and be stablely established. |
The things to be studied are: