Plant ecology

This article is about the scientific discipline. For the journal, see Plant Ecology (journal).
A tropical plant community on Diego Garcia
Rangeland monitoring using Parker 3-step Method, Okanagan Washington 2002

Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the effects of environmental factors upon the abundance of plants, and the interactions among plants and between plants and other organisms.[1] Examples of these are the distribution of temperate deciduous forests in North America, the effects of drought or flooding upon plant survival, and competition among desert plants for water, or effects of herds of grazing animals upon the composition of grasslands.

A global overview of the Earth's major vegetation types is provided by O.W. Archibold.[2] He recognizes 11 major vegetation types: tropical forests, tropical savannas, arid regions (deserts), Mediterranean ecosystems, temperate forest ecosystems, temperate grasslands, coniferous forests, tundra (both polar and high mountain), terrestrial wetlands, freshwater ecosystems and coastal/marine systems. This breadth of topics shows the complexity of plant ecology, since it includes plants from floating single-celled algae up to large canopy forming trees.

One feature that defines plants is photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process of a chemical reactions to create glucose and oxygen, which is vital for plant life.[3] One of the most important aspects of plant ecology is the role plants have played in creating the oxygenated atmosphere of earth, an event that occurred some 2 billion years ago. It can be dated by the deposition of banded iron formations, distinctive sedimentary rocks with large amounts of iron oxide. At the same time, plants began removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby initiating the process of controlling Earth's climate. A long term trend of the Earth has been toward increasing oxygen and decreasing carbon dioxide, and many other events in the Earth's history, like the first movement of life onto land, are likely tied to this sequence of events.[1][4]

One of the early classic books on plant ecology was written by J.E. Weaver and F.E. Clements.[5] It talks broadly about plant communities, and particularly the importance of forces like competition and processes like succession. The term ecology itself was coined by German biologist Ernst Haeckel.[6]

Plant ecology can also be divided by levels of organization including plant ecophysiology, plant population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology and biosphere ecology.[1][7]

First, most plants are rooted in the soil, which makes it difficult to observe and measure nutrient uptake and species interactions. Second, plants often reproduce vegetatively, that is asexually, in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish individual plants. Indeed, the very concept of an individual is doubtful, since even a tree may be regarded as a large collection of linked meristems.[8] Hence, plant ecology and animal ecology have different styles of approach to problems that involve processes like reproduction, dispersal and mutualism. Some plant ecologists have placed considerable emphasis upon trying to treat plant populations as if they were animal populations, focusing on population ecology.[9] Many other ecologists believe that while it is useful to draw upon population ecology to solve certain scientific problems, plants demand that ecologists work with multiple perspectives, appropriate to the problem, the scale and the situation.[1]

  1. ^ a b c d Keddy, Paul A. (2007). Plants and Vegetation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86480-0.
  2. ^ Archibold, O.W. (1995). Ecology of World Vegetation. London.: Chapman and Hall. pp. 510 p. ISBN 0-412-44290-6.
  3. ^ Carroll & Salt (2004). Ecology for Gardeners. Timber Press, Inc. pp. Glossary, page 287. ISBN 0-88192-611-6.
  4. ^ Sönmez, Osman; Saud, Shah; Wang, Depeng; Wu, Chao; Adnan, Muhammad; Turan, Veysel (2021-04-27). Climate Change and Plants. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9781003108931. ISBN 978-1-003-10893-1. S2CID 234855015.
  5. ^ Weaver, J. E. and F. E. Clements. 1938. Plant Ecology. 2nd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
  6. ^ Haeckel, Ernst (1866). Generelle Morphologie der Organismen [The General Morphology of Organisms] (in German). Vol. 2. Berlin, (Germany): Georg Reimer. From p. 286: "Unter Oecologie verstehen wir die gesammte Wissenschaft von den Beziehungen des Organismus zur umgebenden Aussenwelt, wohin wir im weiteren Sinne alle "Existenz-Bedingungen" rechnen können." (By "ecology" we understand the comprehensive science of the relationships of the organism to its surrounding environment, where we can include, in the broader sense, all "conditions of existence".)
  7. ^ Schulze, Ernst-Detlef; et al. (2005). Plant Ecology. Springer. ISBN 9783540208334. Retrieved April 24, 2012. ISBN 3-540-20833-X
  8. ^ Williams, G. C. 1975. Sex and Evolution. Monographs in Population Biology. No. 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  9. ^ Harper, J. L. 1977. Population Biology of Plants. London: Academic Press.