What drives communities on islands?
A community can broadly be defined as a congregation of various species occurring simultaneously in time and space. A more detailed description comes from Whittaker (1975): An assemblage of populations of plants, animals, bacteria and fungi that live in an environment and interact with one another, forming together a distinct living system with its own composition, structure, environmental relationships, development and function.
From this definition it is clear that the interactions that occur in communities are complex, numerous and operate on a multitude of levels. Communities vary extensively in their framework and are scale dependent, so anything from a tree or puddle to a whole forest or desert can be regarded as a community. Despite these huge differences certain processes drive and operate in all communities.
This essay will venture to explain how these processes function when the communities exist on islands and are presumably,......
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Approximate Word Count: 2114
Approximate Pages: 9 (260 words per double-spaced page) |