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A bear with a salmon. Interspecific interactions such as predation are a key aspect of community ecology.. In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, or life assemblage.
Population, community, and physiological ecology provide many of the underlying biological mechanisms influencing ecosystems and the processes they maintain. Flowing of energy and cycling of matter at the ecosystem level are often examined in ecosystem ecology, but, as a whole, this science is defined more by subject matter than by scale.
For example, ecosystems can be quite different if situated in a small depression on the landscape, versus one present on an adjacent steep hillside. [ 9 ] : 39 [ 10 ] : 66 Other external factors that play an important role in ecosystem functioning include time and potential biota , the organisms that are present in a region and could ...
Ecosystem diversity addresses the combined characteristics of biotic properties which are living organisms (biodiversity) and abiotic properties such as nonliving things like water or soil (geodiversity). It is a variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the whole planet.
In scientific ecology, climax community or climatic climax community is a historic term for a community of plants, animals, and fungi which, through the process of ecological succession in the development of vegetation in an area over time, have reached a steady state. This equilibrium was thought to occur because the climax community is ...
Community would be the collective dynamics amongst species and the habitat in which they live in. [6] Communities are most closely associated with habitats, which are more intimate than compared to ecosystems. Habitats signify a smaller, more specific region, while an ecosystem is a broader term that can encompass multiple habitats.
In phytosociology and community ecology an association is a type of ecological community with a predictable species composition and consistent physiognomy (structural appearance) which occurs in a particular habitat type.
For example, a community's composition can be better explained by holism than individualism, or vice versa. This ecological concept is based on the broader concept of holism , which describes the functionality of any system as having many individual parts, all of which are extremely important to the system's viability.