Community Ecology
Temporal dynamics of communities: succession
Outline:
1. Definition of community succession (primary vs. secondary)
A. Entails disturbance
i. Characteristics of disturbance that affect succession (Pickett and White 1985)
B. Terminology: climax, sere/seral stage
2. Three original models of succession: facilitation, tolerance, inhibition
3. Animal community succession
4. Scale: succession is both a pattern and a process
A. Space for time substitution = chronosequence
B. Davis’ palynology work
Terms/people:
succession(primary vs. secondary) inhibition, facilitation, tolerance
climax sere
chronosequence (or chronoseries) Margaret Davis
palynology priority effects
Succession -
requires disturbance for initiation
2 types of succession: primary and secondary
Terminology (much from Clements):
climax
sere/seral stage
properties of different seres - E. Odum 1969:
- biomass, diversity, life cycles, size of organisms, GPP increase
- NPP decreases
- nutrient cycles become increasingly closed (little leakage of nutrients)
multiple (Gleason) vs. single (Clements) climax states for a given site
priority effects
3 types of community replacements: Connell and Slatyer 1977
1) facilitation -
2) tolerance -
3) inhibition -
Maubon et al. (1995) example -
Animal communities undergo succession, too:
Kendeigh 1948 - bird diversity increases with successional age in Michigan
Johnston and Odum 1956 - birds and old-field succession in GA
Succession is an example of an entity that is both a pattern and a process when viewed at different scales.
How do we short-lived humans study succession?
Two ways to document succession:
1. Observe seral stages in one area over time. Problem with this approach is that some successions occur over several hundred years. Thus, the temporal scale is often much too large for most ecologists to do.
2. Compare communities in several areas corresponding to different lengths of time since the onset of succession, from which the sequence of communities is inferred. This uses a "space for time substitution" (an indirect method) = chronosequence or chronoseries
-Margaret Davis 1976 - U. Minnesota - palynology à large-scale changes in biomes (resulting from climate change)
-Overpeck et al. 1992: plant communities are constantly changing (no climax)
Recall that the Clements/Gleason debate was over succession; this debated shaped community ecology by emphasizing competition (rather than altruism/mutualism), individualism.
Then the reigning paradigm (Gleasonian) was somewhat modified to include a degree of determinism: that if random disturbances did not occur, then a quantitative knowledge of a site’s initial conditions would permit accurate prediction of climax community because certain species are consistently superior competitors than others and they “win” à importance of competition in community ecology.
Then along came Davis à community stability is a matter of scale.
Next lecture: the balance of nature?
References:
Butterfield, B.J., J.L. Betancourt, R.M. Turner, and J.M. Briggs. 2010. Facilitation drives 65 years of vegetation change in the Sonoran Desert. Ecology 91:1132-1139.
Clements, F.E. 1916. Plant succession: analysis of the development of vegetation. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication No. 242. Washington, D.C.
Connell, J.H., and R.O. Slatyer. 1977. Mechanisms of succession in natural communities and their role in community stability and organisation. Am. Nat. 111:1119-1144.
Cowles, H.C. 1899. The ecological relations of the vegetation on the sand dunes of lake Michigan. The Botanical Gazette 27.
Davis, M.G. 1976. Pleistocene biogeography of temperate deciduous forests. Geoscience and Man 13:13-26.
Gleason, H.A. 1926. The individualistic concept of the plant association. Torrey Botanical Club Bulletin 53:7-26.
Johnston, D.W., and E.P. Odum. 1956. Breeding bird populations in relation to plant succession on the piedmont of Georgia. Ecology 37:50-62.
Kendeigh, S.C. 1948. Bird populations and biotic communities in northern lower Michigan. Ecology 29:101-114.
Maubon, M., J.-F. Ponge, and J. Andre. 1995. Dynamics of Vaccinium myrtillus patches in mountain spruce forest. J. Vegetation Science 6:343-348.
Odum, E.P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development. Science 164:262-270.
Overpeck, J.T., R.S. Webb, and T. Webb. 1992. Mapping eastern North American vegetation change of the past 18,000 years: no-analogs and the future. Geology 20:1071-1074.
Pickett, S.T.A., and M.J. McDonnell. 1989. Changing perspectives in community dynamics: a theory of successional forces. Trends Ecol. Evol. 4:241-245.
Pickett, S.T.A., and P.S. White. 1985. The Ecology of Natural Disturbance as Patch Dynamics. Academic Press, New York, NY.
Walker, L.R., and F.S. Chapin. 1987. Interactions among processes controlling successional change. Oikos 50:131-135.