Knowledge Tree
plant community
Also known as: plant communities
Facts (14)
Sources
Compendium Vol. 5 No. 1: The ecological role of native plants bio4climate.org 14 facts
claimPlant communities serve as convenient units for conveying information about vegetation and its environment.
referenceThorpe et al. (2011) review whether plant-plant interactions drive evolutionary changes in plant communities.
quoteThorpe et al. (2011) state: "If such evolution is common, plant communities are not random assemblages of species."
claimAllelopathic chemicals may act as drivers of evolution due to biogeographical differences in their effects on plant communities.
claimPlant communities typically coexist in a complex mosaic pattern, meaning that a single climax community does not cover an entire region.
claimE. Clements proposed that a plant community functions like an integral organism where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and component species are interdependent due to multiple positive and neutral interactions.
claimThe association view of plant communities suggests that a plant community is an integrated whole, whose component species are interdependent.
claimA plant community is defined as a relatively uniform piece of vegetation in a uniform environment, possessing a recognizable floristic composition and structure that is relatively distinct from the surrounding vegetation.
claimAlthough populations of participating species in a plant community are usually distributed individualistically across the landscape, they may interact to build an integrated unit with emergent properties.
referencePlant community members maintain an intricate balance by sharing solar radiation, soil water, and nutrients to produce constant biomass, recycling nutrients between soil and living tissue, and alternating with each other in time and space.
claimA vegetation type, or plant community, is defined as a group of plants identifiable by its distinct appearance compared to other landscape types within a given area.
claimE. Clements compared a plant community to an integral organism, asserting that the whole community is greater than the sum of its parts.
claimBarbour (1987) states that a plant community's future composition can often be estimated by extrapolating from changes measured over a short time, comparing communities with plants of different ages, or noting differences between overstory plants and understory seedlings.
referenceThe Braun-Blanquet approach to vegetation ecology focused on the relationships between plant communities and their environment, as well as interactions within communities, which is now incorporated into the concept of an ecosystem.