BIOL 1004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Interspecific Competition, Bluegill, Species Richness
20 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Community is an association of interacting species inhabiting a defined area. In application communities are often defined by groups restricted taxonomically (e. g. song birds, aquatic insects, small mammals) or functionally (e. g. In application communities are often defined by groups restricted taxonomically (e. g. song birds, aquatic insects, small mammals) or functionally (e. g. trees, pollinators, predators, microbes). A central theme in community ecology is to understand how abiotic factors and species interactions influence the characteristics of a community. The key characteristics of a community (community structure) Relative abundance: percentage of the total number of individuals of all the species represented by one species. Species diversity: the combination of species richness and their relative abundance. Ecosystem stability is argued to increase with species diversity. Occurs when two species overlap in at least one type of resource. For two competing species: a reduction in the abundance of a species should lead to an increase in the abundance of the other species.
