Plant ecology - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This article is about the scientific discipline, for the journal see Plant Ecology
Plant Ecology
Plant Ecology is a scientific journal on plant ecology, formerly known as Vegetatio. The journal publishes original scientific papers on the ecology of vascular plants and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The editor in chief is Neal J...

Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

which studies the distribution and abundance

Abundance (ecology)

Abundance is an ecological concept referring to the relative representation of a species in a particular ecosystem. It is usually measured as the large number of individuals found per sample...

of plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

s, the interactions among and between members of plant species, and their interactions with their environment

Environment (biophysical)

The biophysical environment is the combined modeling of the physical environment and the biological life forms within the environment, and includes all variables, parameters as well as conditions and modes inside the Earth's biosphere. The biophysical environment can be divided into two categories:...

. Plant ecology has its roots both in plant geography and in studies of the interactions between individual plants, populations of plants, plant communities, and their respective environments.

Broadly speaking, the scope of plant ecology encompasses plant ecophysiology

Ecophysiology

Ecophysiology or environmental physiology is a biological discipline which studies the adaptation of organism's physiology to environmental conditions...

, plant population ecology

Population ecology

Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment. It is the study of how the population sizes of species living together in groups change over time and space....

, community ecology, ecosystem ecology

Ecosystem ecology

Ecosystem ecology is the integrated study of biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and their interactions within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work and relates this to their components such as chemicals, bedrock, soil, plants, and animals.Ecosystem ecology...

and landscape ecology

Landscape ecology

Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between urban development and ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems...

.

Most plant

Plant

s are root

Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating . Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either...

ed in the soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

, and often they reproduce vegetatively

Vegetative reproduction

Vegetative reproduction is a form of asexual reproduction in plants. It is a process by which new individuals arise without production of seeds or spores...

in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish individual plants of the same species. These characteristic features of plants necessitate a somewhat different scientific methodology than that used in, say, animal ecology

Ecology

though the different subdisciplines of plant ecology remain integrated with ecosystem ecology

Ecosystem ecology

Competition

When plants grow close to other plants they may compete for resources, such as light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

, water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

and nutrients, that are needed for plant growth. Plants may compete for a single growth-limiting resource e.g. light in agricultural systems with sufficient water and nutrients, but in most natural ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

s plants probably are adapted to respond to the environment in such a way that they are colimited by several resources, e.g. light

Light

, phosphorus

Phosphorus

Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...

and nitrogen

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

at the same time.

In principle, it is possible to examine competition at the level of the limiting resources if a detailed knowledge of the physiological processes of the competing plants is available. However, in most terrestrial ecological studies, there is only little information on the uptake and dynamics of the resources that limit the growth of different plant species, and, instead, competition is inferred from observed negative effects of neighbouring plants without knowing precisely which resources the plants were competing for.

Facilitation

Facilitation among neighboring plants may act by reducing the negative impacts of a stressful environment, and in general, facilitation is more likely to occur in physically stressful environments than in favorable environments, where competition may be the most important interaction among species

Herbivory

An important ecological function of plant

Plant

s is that they produce

Primary production

400px|thumb|Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance, from September [[1997]] to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential, and not an actual estimate of it...

organic compound

Organic compound

An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of carbon-containing compounds such as carbides, carbonates, simple oxides of carbon, and cyanides, as well as the...

s for herbivore

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

s in the bottom of the food web

Food web

A food web depicts feeding connections in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs...

. Oppositely, herbivory is an important source of disturbance for many plant species, and they have evolved many different forms of defensive physical structures and chemical compounds to prevent herbivory.

Distribution

Plant communities are broadly distributed into biomes based on the structure of dominant plant species. Biomes are determined by regional climates, namely temperature and precipitation, and follow general latitudinal trends. Within biomes, there may be many ecological communities, which are impacted not only by climate and a variety of smaller-scale features, including soils, hydrology

Hydrology

Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability...

, and disturbance regime.

In the same way that plant communities vary at differing latitudes, plant communities vary with elevation

Elevation

The elevation of a geographic location is its height above a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface ....

. Communities at high elevations often resemble those found at higher latitudes.

Abundance

The ecological success of a plant species in a specific environment may be quantified by its abundance

Abundance (ecology)

Abundance is an ecological concept referring to the relative representation of a species in a particular ecosystem. It is usually measured as the large number of individuals found per sample...

, and depending on the life form of the plant different measures of abundance may be relevant, e.g. density, biomass

Biomass (ecology)

Biomass, in ecology, is the mass of living biological organisms in a given area or ecosystem at a given time. Biomass can refer to species biomass, which is the mass of one or more species, or to community biomass, which is the mass of all species in the community. It can include microorganisms,...

, or plant cover

Plant cover

The abundances of plant species are often measured by plant cover, i.e. the relative area covered by different plant species in a small plot. Plant cover is not biased by the size and distributions of individuals, and is an important and often measured characteristic of the composition of plant...

.

The change in the abundance of a plant species may be due to both abiotic factors, e.g. climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, or biotic

Biotic component

Biotic components are the living things that shape an ecosystem. A biotic factor is any living component that affects another organism, including animals that consume the organism in question, and the living food that the organism consumes. Each biotic factor needs energy to do work and food for...

factors, e.g herbivory or interspecific competition

Interspecific competition

Interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resource in an ecosystem...

Colonisation and local extinction

Whether a plant species is present at a local area depends on the processes of colonisation

Colonisation (biology)

Colonisation is the process in biology by which a species spreads into new areas, regions, and continents. It is sometimes also referred to as immigration, but colonisation often refers to successful immigration with integration to a community, having resisted initial local extinction.One classic...

and local extinction

Local extinction

Local extinction, also known as extirpation, is the condition of a species which ceases to exist in the chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere...

. The probaility of colonisation decreases with distance to neighboring habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

s where the species is present and increases with plant abundance and fecundity

Fecundity

Fecundity, derived from the word fecund, generally refers to the ability to reproduce. In demography, fecundity is the potential reproductive capacity of an individual or population. In biology, the definition is more equivalent to fertility, or the actual reproductive rate of an organism or...

in neighboring habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

s and the dispersal

Biological dispersal

Biological dispersal refers to species movement away from an existing population or away from the parent organism. Through simply moving from one habitat patch to another, the dispersal of an individual has consequences not only for individual fitness, but also for population dynamics, population...

distance of the species. The probability of local extinction decreases with abundance (both living plants and seeds in the soil seed bank

Soil Seed Bank

The soil seed bank refers to the natural storage of seeds, often dormant, within the soil of most ecosystems. The study of soil seed banks started in 1859 when Charles Darwin observed the emergence of seedlings using soil samples from the bottom of a lake. The first scientific paper on the subject...

Competition

Facilitation

Herbivory

Distribution

Abundance

Colonisation and local extinction

See also