BIOL 121 Lecture Notes - Climax Community, Keystone Species, Primary Succession
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BIOL 121 Full Course Notes
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What factors determine the impact of disturbance? (3) Usually focuses on two at a time, but biological communities can contain thousands of species. To understand how communities work, biologists must broaden the scope of research and explore how combinations of many species interact. If community destroyed by disturbance and allowed to recover, diversity and abundance of species should be identical when recovery complete. But if communities can be made up of many diff combo of species, depending on which arrive earlier/later, then community composition will be difficult to predict. Clements argued that communities develop by passing through a series of predictable stages dictated by extensive interactions among species and that this development culminates in a stable final stage known as a climax community. Contended that community in an area is neither stable nor predictable. Claimed that plant and animal communities just happen to share similar climatic requirements.