Temporal Change in Community Structure and Function

Abstract

Not only is a community always shifting and changing in the sense that it is an operational unit; as we noted at the end of Chapter 2, the community is in any case always in a state of flux — changing with time as species are continually lost and replaced, as their dominance or actual role in the dynamics of the community shifts and alters. Such changes over the time are not just due to major (and frequently man-made) perturbations of the system — through felling trees in primary forest, burning of heath or savannah grasslands, or spoilage of land and water with pollutants — but are part of the pattern of natural communities.