Publication Date:
2001-07-28
Description:
Studies that combine experimental manipulations with long-term data collection reveal elaborate interactions among species that affect the structure and dynamics of ecosystems. Research programs in U.S. desert shrubland and pinyon-juniper woodland have shown that (i) complex dynamics of species populations reflect interactions with other organisms and fluctuating climate; (ii) genotype x environment interactions affect responses of species to environmental change; (iii) herbivore-resistance traits of dominant plant species and impacts of "keystone" animal species cascade through the system to affect many organisms and ecosystem processes; and (iv) some environmental perturbations can cause wholesale reorganization of ecosystems because they exceed the ecological tolerances of dominant or keystone species, whereas other changes may be buffered because of the compensatory dynamics of complementary species.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Brown, J H -- Whitham, T G -- Morgan Ernest, S K -- Gehring, C A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2001 Jul 27;293(5530):643-50.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. jhbrown@unm.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11474100" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Arizona
;
Desert Climate
;
*Ecosystem
;
Environment
;
Genotype
;
*Gymnosperms
;
Moths/physiology
;
Plants
;
Population Dynamics
;
*Rodentia/physiology
;
Time Factors
;
*Trees
;
Weather
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
