Community


Community" describes a set of locally interacting species in a particular area. These interactions commonly include providing shelter, competing with one another for resources, consuming one another as part of a food web (as either predators or parasites), and contributing to reproduction and dispersal.

For example, visible members of a grassland community may include competing plants, grazing mammals and insects (both above and below ground), pollinating insects, predatory insects and spiders, and insect- and seed-eating birds.

Microscopically, one would expect tiny soil invertebrates and microbes, including numerous worms, insects, mites, protozoans, bacteria, and fungi, many in complex, mutually dependent ("symbiotic") relationships with each other and with plant roots.

Ecologists study the diverse types of interactions within communities in order to understand which relationships regulate the abundances of different species and, consequently, which processes control the overall structure of the community.

Losses of Species and Habitats menu