Talk:Succession

Urban succession

I figured it was appropriate to introduce the concept to this page. I'm no expert on the subject however, so I kept it short. (Yutgoyun 07:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC))

Time to split ecological succession into its own article

I'll be working on that soon, hopefully. Wachholder0 21:56, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Changes

I am not the author of this, however I noticed it has been tagged. Here is my initial idea of how it should be changed. One aspect that I cannot make up my mind about, is climax community versus continuum. If continuum is now accepted as the standard, shouldn't that be referred to throughout the article, with a brief mention of the transition from climax community to contimuum at the end? More research may be necessary solve this problem.

The concept of the climax community is still sometimes used for convenience, but it is not really a valid ecological concept. Most communites go through cycles of disturbance and succession, and a particular area could follow any of several successional paths. The old, "Clementsian" ecological meaning of climax referred to a single path to a supposedly stable and highly complex community. Wachholder0 21:56, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Ecological Succession

Ecological succession is the change over time in the types of species inhabiting an ecological community.

Succession can be primary or secondary. Primary succession occurs on essentially new substrata: bare rock or soil that has never been colonized before, such as lava flows and sand dunes. Secondary succession occurs on previously colonized land, whose physical characteristics have changed over time. Examples include a drained reservoir, cleared forest, or plowed field.

Succession begins with arrival of the pioneer species that leads to establishment of a climax community, or continuum. In primary successions, pioneer species are typically hardy plants that survive harsh conditions. On English sand dunes, marram grass has deep roots to tap into the water table, rhizomes to bind the soil, and leaves that reduce water loss through transpiration. On lava flows, pioneer species are adapted to survive with thin or no soil, and possibly little water.

The pioneer plants add organic matter to the soil, and help bind soil particles together, slowly enhancing the soil quality. This enables a sequence of other species to survive until a climax community is established.

Climax communities are communities of plants, animals, fungi, etc. that will be able to replace themselves with new generations of the same species. The climax community of an area is determined by the characteristics of the area, including elevation, soil type, and the amount of rainfall. A common type of climax community is woodland that replaces an abandoned field.

What used to be called a climax community, is now recognized as a continuum, one that is subject to change with climate, soil conditions, etc. To reiderate with a quote from Ecology 4th Edition (Ricklefs and Miller pg567): "In recent years, the concept of the climax has been greatly modified -- to the point of outright rejection by many ecologists -- with the recognition of communities as open systems whose composition varies continuously over environmental gradients."

Rushfan 21:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

No {{disambig}}

This is not properly a disambiguation page, and I have removed the template from the page. Although a disambig page could be written for this topic, it would have to be much different in order to conform to the Manual of Style. I think it is better to keep the current summary format as a substantive article than to lose all that information. --Russ Blau (talk) 17:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)