BIO120H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Westerlies, Superorganism, Plant Ecology
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BIO120H1 Full Course Notes
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Early plant ecologists: used stands of vegetation (numerous study sites), made lists of plants they found there, search for informative patterns in data, argument with colleagues about meaning of patterns! Dif culties of plant ecology: plant communities are pretty resistant to experimentation, lacks a tradition of experimentation! Experiments are either undervalued or hard to perform! Emphasizes that environment is changed by the species themselves! The opposite of this is called allogenic (environment is changed by external forces, not biotic community): interest: some plant species occurred together more often than one would expect by chance (pattern association)! Ex. if you can nd american beech in a forest, you"ll probable nd sugar maple too! Theory: plant association occurs because the species were functionally. Tuesday, december 6, 2016 dependent on each other: likened plant community to superorganism, parts are functionally integrated > matured the same way as an embryonic organism! Typological thinking: beech-maple forest was a category: explanation for ecological patchiness!
