10 - Community Dynamics

Abstract

Community structure changes through time as the abundances of species change, altering the network of interactions. Short-term (e.g., seasonal or annual) changes in community structure represent responses to environmental changes that favor some species or affect interaction strength. Longer term (e.g., successional) changes in community structure reflect changes in habitat conditions during community development on newly available or disturbed sites. Finally, changes in community structure over evolutionary time reflect responses to long-term trends in environmental conditions. Temporal patterns of community organization and their sensitivity to environmental changes can indicate their stability to anthropogenic changes. Changes in resource quality, competition, and predation lead to population irruptions of some species and local extinction of others, thereby affecting their interactions with other species and leading to changes in community structure. This chapter gives the thorough review of community dynamics, which briefly explains the short-term change in the community structure, successional change in community structure, paleoecology, and so on. Ecological succession, the sequential stages of community development on newly exposed or disturbed sites, is one of the best documented ecological phenomena and has provided a unifying concept that integrates species life history strategies, population behavior, community dynamics and ecosystem processes. In addition, paleoecological research indicates that species interactions and community structures have been relatively consistent over evolutionary time.