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In 1997, Grimm and Wissel made an inventory of 167 definitions used in the literature and found 70 different stability concepts. [5] One of the strategies that these two authors proposed to clarify the subject is to replace ecological stability with more specific terms, such as constancy, resilience and persistence. In order to fully describe ...
Hysteresis is an important concept in alternative stable state theory. In this ecological context, hysteresis refers to the existence of different stable states under the same variables or parameters. Hysteresis can be explained by "path-dependency", in which the equilibrium point for the trajectory of "A → B" is different from for "B → A ...
According to a widespread narrative, the ideas of a holistic ecological community were introduced by plant ecologist Frederic Clements in 1916, and countered by Henry Gleason in 1917, when he proposed the individualistic/open community concept (in applications to plants). [1] However, this seems to be wrong in at least two essential respects:
Resistance is one of the major aspects of ecological stability.Volker Grimm and Christian Wissel identified 70 terms and 163 distinct definitions of the various aspects of ecological stability, but found that they could be reduced to three fundamental properties: "staying essentially unchanged", "returning to the reference state...after a temporary disturbance" and "persistence through time of ...
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.
Coexistence theory attempts to explain the paradox of the plankton-- how can ecologically similar species coexist without competitively excluding each other?. Coexistence theory is a framework to understand how competitor traits can maintain species diversity and stave-off competitive exclusion even among similar species living in ecologically similar environments.
The concept of resilience in ecological systems was first introduced by the Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling [7] in order to describe the persistence of natural systems in the face of changes in ecosystem variables due to natural or anthropogenic causes. Resilience has been defined in two ways in ecological literature:
Also Gause's law. A biological rule which states that two species cannot coexist in the same environment if they are competing for exactly the same resource, often memorably summarized as "complete competitors cannot coexist". coniferous forest One of the primary terrestrial biomes, culminating in the taiga. conservation biology The study of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting and ...