 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Biocoenosis" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Abiocenosis (UK English,biocoenosis, alsobiocenose,biocoenose,biotic community,biological community,ecological community,life assemblage), coined byKarl Möbius in 1877, describes theinteractingorganisms living together in ahabitat (biotope).[1] The use of this term has declined in the 21st сentury.
In thepalaeontological literature, the term distinguishes "life assemblages", which reflect the original living community, living together at one place and time. In other words, it is an assemblage offossils or a community of specific time, which is different from "death assemblages" (thanatocoenoses).[2] No palaeontological assemblage will ever completely represent the original biological community (i.e. the biocoenosis, in the sense used by anecologist); the term thus has somewhat different meanings in a palaeontological and an ecological context.[2]
Based on the concept of biocenosis, ecological communities can take various forms:
Thegeographical extent of a biocenose is limited by the requirement of a more or lessuniformspecies composition.
Anecosystem, originally defined byTansley (1935), is a biotic community (or biocenosis) along with its physical environment (orbiotope). In ecological studies, biocenosis is the emphasis on relationships between species in an area. These relationships are an additional consideration to the interaction of each species with the physical environment.
Biotic communities vary in size, and larger ones may contain smaller ones. Species interactions are evident in food or feeding relationships. A method of delineating biotic communities is to map thefood network to identify which species feed upon which others and then determine the system boundary as the one that can be drawn through the fewest consumption links relative to the number of species within the boundary.
Mapping biotic communities is important identifying sites needing environmental protection, such as the BritishSite of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). TheAustralianDepartment of the Environment and Heritage maintains a register ofThreatened Species and Threatened Ecological Communities under theEnvironment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
