Community Analysis

Communities may be convenietly named and classified according to :

1. Major structural features such as dominant species, life forms or indicators
2. The physical habitat of the community
3. Functional attributes such as the type of community metabolism
Classification based on structural features are rather specific for certain environments
attempts to set up a universal classification on this basis have largely been unsatisfactory.
Functional atributes often a better basis for the comparison of all kommunities in widely
different habitats, for instance, terrestial, marine, or freshwater. Community analysis within a
given geographical region or area of landscape has featured two contrasting approaches:
1. The zonal approach, in which discrete communities are recognized, classified, and
listed in a sort of check list of community types
2. The gradient analysis approach, which involves the arrangement of populations along
uni or multidimensional environmental gradient or exis with community recognition
based on frequency

distributions, similarity, coefficients, or other statistical

comparisons.
The term ordination is frequently used to designate the ordering of species and communities
along gradients, and the term continuum to designate the gradient containing the ordered
species or communities.
Since the community is composed of organisms, many ecologists feel that communities
should always be named for important organisms, generally the dominants. This work well
where there are but one or two dominant species, or species groups, for example, in the
sagebrush and shadscale desert communities, described in section 1,which remain
conspicuous at all times. In many cases dominance is not so conveniently concentrated, as
indicated in Section 2, or species may change continually with the seasons, as in many
plankton type communites. In general, the inclusion of highly motile animal into the
community name is not satisfactory because the animal component is generally too variable
form time to rerely is there clear cut long term dominance by one or two species. However
this emphasis is accomplished by the description of the community which accompanies the
name. Communities as well as organisms, need to have descriptions as well as names.

Distribution of population of dominant trees along a hypothetical gradient, 0 to 10,

ilustrating the arangement of component populations within a continuum type of
community. Each

species shows a bell-shaped distribution with a peak of relative

abundace at a different point along the gradient, some show a wider range of tolerance
than other species. Within the large community, subcommunities may be delemited on the
basis of combination of two or more dominants, indicators or other features, such divisions
will be somewhat arbitrary but useful for description and comparison. The curves have been
patterned after data of several studies of tree distribution along an altitude gradient.

In any analysis of communites it is extremely important to consider the time gradient, boht at
the developmental level and on the longer evolutionary scale. To summarize, gradient
analysis together with more complex and as yet little used materical, pattern, or multi axial
approaches can detect discontinuities in an abjective manner and bring out relationship
between component populations.

Species Diversity in Communities

Of the total number of species in a trophic component, or in a community as a whole,
a lerativaly small per cent are usually abundant and a large per cent rare. While the few
common species or dominants, largely account for the energy flow in each trophic group it is
the large number of rare species that largely determine the species diversity of tropic groups
and whole communities.
While the pattern of a few common species with large numbers of individuals
associated with many rare species with few in individuals associated with many rare species
with few individuals is characteristic of community structure everywhere, the quantitative
species abundance relationships vary widely. Two broad approaches are used to analyze
species diversity in different situations namely,
1. Comparisons based on the shape, patterns, or equations of species abundance
curves
2. Comparisons based on diversity indices, which are ratios or other mathematical
expressions, of species importance relationships.

It is important to recognize that species diversity has a number of components which may
respond differently to geographical, developmental or physical factors. One major component
might be called the species richness or variety componenent, as is expressed by simple
ration between total species (S) and total number (N), such as the three (d). A second major
component of versity is what has been called evenness or equitability in the apportionment
of individuals among the species.
General relationship between the number of species (S) and number of individual per
species (N/S). Most natural communities contain a few species with large number of
individual and many species, each represented by a few individual. Rigorous physical
environment, pollution, or other stresses will tend to flattenthe curve, as shown by dotted
line.

There are number of important ecological principles associated with diversity concepts, as
outlined in summary statement above. As margalef (1968) expresses it the ecologist sees in
any measure of diversity an expression of the possibilities of constructing feedback system.
Higher diversity then, means longer food chains and more cases of symbiosis and greater
possibilities for negative feedback control, which reduces oscillations and hence increases
stability. While productivity or total energy flow certainly affects species diversity, the two
quantities ere not related in any simple linear manner