BIO120H1 Chapter 15: Chapter 15 reading notes
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BIO120H1 Full Course Notes
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Clements: observed changes in species composition: analogous to developmental processes by which organisms go from embryos to immuture and eventually adult forms. Most life: obliterated; newly formed raw terrain of volcanic ash. When a habitat is disturbed: (event that causes a marked change in a pop. or community), an ecological system is displaced from equilibrium, community slowly rebuilds. Pioneering species that are adapted to disturbed habitats are eventually replaced by other species as the community regains its former composition and structure sequence of changes initiated by disturbance: succession. Annual herbs follow these grasses, further enriching and stabilizing the soil until the conditions are suitable for shrubs, then pines, but pines do not reseed themselves well enough and give way to deciduous trees. Hence although initial stages of sere depend on the habitat where it begins, the influence of these starting conditions wanes with time as the seres converge.
