Plant Species Removals and Old-Field Community Structure and Stability

EcologyPublished 1 November 1976

Edith B. Allen, Richard T. T. Forman

DOI10.2307/1935047

Source URL

Citations109

SJR quartileQ1

SJR score2.04

SNIP1.53

TL;DR

It is concluded that community recovery from a stress and the effects of species extinction are dependent on community structure and species composition.

Abstract

The roles of species abundance, community structure, and competitive relationships in community recovery following stress were studied by separately removing species in June in three 6—yr—old fields at Hutcheson Memorial Forest, New Jersey. Percent cover of remaining species was measured in September. In 9 of 17 species removals there was high community recovery, mainly due to one remaining species which increased significantly; 8 removals resulted in low community recovery. Abundant species replaced species removed. Only one remaining species, Potentilla simplex, increased regardless of treatment; the responses of others were highly dependent on the particular species removed, emphasizing the importance of species interactions. Reciprocal removals for a species pair produced unrelated responses. Community recovery correlated inversely with cover of species removed. However, the order of species according to cover differed from the order of amounts of community recovery, indicating that species rank by abundance may be an inadequate measure of relative importance of a species in the community. High community recovery correlated with vertical stratification (bilayered with a dense ground layer), horizontal patchiness (many low diversity patches), abundance of rapid vegetatively reproducing species, and differential species interactions. Species diversity changed negligibly following removal of a species. It is concluded that community recovery from a stress and the effects of species extinction are dependent on (a) community structure and (b) species composition.

Keywords

Agricultural and Biological SciencesEnvironmental Science

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