Plant ecology

This article is about the scientific discipline, for the journal see Plant Ecology

Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology which studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the interactions among and between members of plant species, and their interactions with their environment. Plant ecology has its roots both in plant geography and in studies of the interactions between individual plants and their environment.

Broadly speaking, the scope of plant ecology encompasses plant ecophysiology, plant population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology.

Most plants are rooted in the soil, and often they reproduce vegetatively in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish individual plants of the same species. These characteristic features of plants necessitate a somewhat different scientific methodology than used in e.g. animal ecology, but the different subdiciplines of ecology is integrated in ecosystem ecology.

Structure and function

Life forms

Main article: Plant life-form

See also: Raunkiær plant life-form

Strategies

Main article: Plant strategies

See also: C-S-R Triangle theory

Reproduction

Main article: Plant reproduction

Biological interactions

Main article: Biological interaction

Competition

Main article: Competition (biology)

When plants grow close to other plants they may compete for resources, such as light, water and nutrients, that are needed for plant growth. Plants may compete for a single growth-limiting resource e.g. light in agricultural systems with suffcient water and nutrients, but in most natural ecosystems plants probably are adapted to respond to the environment in such a way that they are colimited by several resources, e.g. both light, phosphor and nitrogen .

Facilitation

Main article: Ecological facilitation

Herbivory

Main articles: Herbivory and Plant defense against herbivory

An important ecological function of plants is that they produce organic compounds for herbivores in the bottom of the food web. Oppositely, herbivory is an important source of disturbance for many plant species, and they have evolved many different forms of defensive physical structures and chemical compounds to prevent herbivory.

Distribution

Main articles: Phytogeography and Species distribution

Abundance

Main article: Abundance (ecology)

The ecological success of a plant species in a specific environment may be quantified by its abundance, and depending on the life form of the plant different measures of abundance may be relevant, e.g. density, biomass, or plant cover.

The change in the abundance of a plant species may be due to both abiotic factors, e.g. climate change, or biotic factors, e.g herbivory or interspecific competition.

Dispersal

Main articles: Biological dispersal and Seed dispersal

See also

• Ecology
• Biogeochemistry
• Community ecology
• Landscape ecology
• Systems ecology
• Vegetation