PCB 4043 Chapter Notes - Chapter 17: Abiotic Component, Secondary Succession, Ecosystem Engineer
13 Jun 2016
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17. 1: agents of change act on communities across all temporal and spatial scales. Consider a coral reef community in the indian. If you could view it over the last few decades, you would observe slow and subtle changes, as well as catastrophic ones. Succession is change in species composition in communities over time: it results from both biotic and abiotic factors, abiotic factors, in the form of climate, soils, nutrients, and water, vary over daily, seasonal, decadal, and longer time scales. Abiotic agents of change fall into two categories: disturbance: events that injure or kill some individuals and create opportunities for other individuals, stress: an abiotic factor reduces the growth or reproduction of individuals. Biotic interactions can result in the replacement of one species with another. Diseases can initiate community change by causing death or slow growth of a species. Ecosystem engineers or keystone species can influence community change.
