Mr. Ogren Succession Student Notes How Does a Ecosystems Cope With Change?

One characteristic of all ecosystems is that their vegetation structures are constantly changing in response to the environment. This is ecological succession or community development and is a normal response to competition. Primary Succession There are two types of succession, primary and secondary, depending on the process starts. Primary succession involves the development of a biotic community that is essentially starts with infertile soil. Primary Succession First a community must have soil, composed of rock particles, organic matter, air, water, and living organisms. This may take hundreds to thousands of years. This process begins with pioneer species on bare rock, which must be able to survive hot and cold climates with little nutrients. Examples include lichens and mosses. Slowly the soil builds up organic matter and nutrients Through processes such as fragmentation thin patches of soil start. Soon small perennial grasses and herbs take root which are blown in from the wind. These early successional plant species add to the organic waste as they die and trap more nutrients into the soil from the wind. The also break up the bedrock more with their roots. They can tolerate harsh conditions and grow quickly in a short life time while staying close to the ground. Mid-successional plants need enough moisture and nutrients in the soil that may take hundreds of years to develop. They may include grasses and low shrubs and later trees that require lots of sunlight.

After a period of time these tree species are replaced by late successional plants usually trees that can tolerate shade. Without disturbances of flood, fire, climate, or human disturbances this system will stabilize. Secondary Succession Secondary Succession: the more common type of succession begins in an area where the natural vegetation has been disturbed but the soil remains. This area, the NC Piedmont was once cleared and farmed by Europeans. Later that land was abandoned due to leeching and erosion and now has gone through secondary succession. Because succession effects the type of vegetation it in turn effects the food and shelter for various types of animals. Thus as succession changes the plants it also changes the animals. Because primary and secondary succession includes changes in the community structure, the different stages of succession have different species diversity, trophic structures, niches, nutrient cycling, and energy flow. In early succession there are small changes in species diversity yet a large change in NPP, while late has little change in NPP and large species diversity. How does one species replace another one? Three factors effect how and the rate of succession. Facilitation is when a species makes an area more suitable for other species with different niche requirements. For example lichens add soil to the colonization site making it easier for grasses to root. Facilitation plays a more important role in primary succession.

Inhibition occurs when interference competition, exploitation competition or both hinder the establishment and growth of other species. Succession then can proceed only when some disturbance takes place. Another factor that can effect succession is when late successional plants tolerate plants of

earlier stages of succession but are unaffected by them, this is known as tolerance. This may explain why late successional plants can thrive in mature communities without eliminating some early and mid successional plants. Disturbances? The only thing guaranteed in life is change and is the driving force in life. Ecosystems are not one distinct blanket of vegetation but rather an ever-changing irregular mosaic area of patches at different stages. As a tree dies and falls it provides space for succession Savannahs, temperate, grasslands, chaparral, and many other systems depend on fires to provide these patches and remove low-lying vegetation. In some areas conifers which can resist fire and trigger seed germination you can see pines all about the same height which germinated from the same fire and now grow with little competition. By suppressing fires in a fire-maintained community alters its structure and allows a build up of flammable underbrush. This can convert relatively harmless fires into intense enough fires to destroy larger fire resistant species. This can also lead to the succession of grasslands into shrub lands or woodlands. Americas Image of Forest Fires! Agriculture changes succession by cutting down diverse late succession communities into early succession monocultures. Herbicides prevent other opportunistic species from moving into the community. Timber companies increase productivity by replacing diverse forests into fast growing species and spray herbicides to prevent competition. Homeowners spend a great deal of time and money keeping their monoculture lawns in an early succession state. The greatest diversity is often seen with frequent moderate disturbances allowing opportunistic species a chance but not severe enough to eliminate late successional plants. This is the Intermediate disturbance hypothesis

Predictability It is tempting to assume that once a climax community or late successional stage has developed that it will sustain itself indefinitely. However, due to the chaos effect there is no certainty that if a particular tree falls in the forest that it will be replace by the same species. Perhaps erosion or drought or some other factor has influence the community so that it may never return to the same condition. This is why know in the ecologist community the term succession is not used as much which would mean a series of predictable steps, but rather community development or biotic change. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Stability. A complex ecosystem is a series of positive and negative feedback loops that is usually in a constant dynamic change. Unless some major disturbance occurs you will still most likely recognize it as the community it has always been for the next 50 to 100 years. How much disturbance is needed to change a community is determined by the ecosystems. 1. Inertia or persistence which is the ability of a living system to resist being disturbed or altered. For example is a forest fire resistant? Constancy is the ability of a living system such as a population to maintain a certain size or keep its numbers within the limits imposed by available resources. Resilience is the ability of a living system to bounce back after an external disturbance that is not too drastic. Often communities that have opportunistic species or generalist species have high resilience. Systems are so complex it is difficult to tell how they maintain these factors while continually responding to disturbances and predict which one or combination of environmental factors that can stress a system beyond its level of tolerance. Signs of ill health 1. a drop in primary productivity 2. increases in nutrient losses 3. decline or extinction of indicator species

4. larger population of insect pests or disease organisms 5. a decline in species diversity 6. a presence of contaminants Does species diversity increase stability? It was once thought that species diversity created stability allowing more options in a food web. However recent research indicates this may not be true. There is of course some minimum threshold of species diversity below which ecosystems cannot function, such as producers and decomposers. One reason for the difficultly of understanding this threshold is that some species play redundant roles or niches in ecosystems. However, ecosystems with more species tend to have higher net primary productivity thus can also be more resilient. How much diversity is needed as insurance is not certain. Recent research indicates that average primary productivity reaches a peak at 10 - 40 producer species, many systems contain more but which are essential for productivity are not known. Another confusing part is that the definition of stability and diversity are arguable. Do systems need both inertia and resilience to be stable. Rain forest are inert and grasslands are resilient. Finally populations and systems are rarely at equilibrium but rather constantly in disturbance. This means a ecologist is trying to investigate a moving target and never fully knows what is abnormal and normal. What determines the Number of Species in an ecosystem? Two factors affecting the species diversity of land plants and animals in a system are its size and degree of isolation. In the 1960's Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson began studying community islands to discover why large islands tend to have more species than small islands. The species equilibrium model or the theory of island biogeography was developed.

This model states that the # of species on the island is determined by the balance of immigration rate to the island and the extinction rate of species established on the island. At some point the immigration and extinction will reach an equilibrium point that determines the islands average number of different species. The model also predicts that the size and isolation in turn effect these rates. A small island is hard to find thus smaller immigration and also fewer resources and niches thus more extinction.

The isolation is important factor in determining the immigration rate. Those closer to mainland are more likely to have higher species diversity due to organisms being blow, washed, or traveled to.