Phytosociology
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Phytosociology, also known as phytocoenology or simply plant sociology, is the study of groups of species of plant that are usually found together. Phytosociology aims to empirically describe the vegetative environment of a given territory. A specific community of plants is considered a social unit, the product of definite conditions, present and past, and can exist only when such conditions are met. In phyto-sociology, such a unit is known as a phytocoenosis (or phytocoenose). A phytocoenosis is more commonly known as a plant community, and consists of the sum of all plants in a given area. It is a subset of a biocoenosis, which consists of all organisms in a given area. More strictly speaking, a phytocoenosis is a set of plants in area that are interacting with each other through competition or other ecological processes. Coenoses are not equivalent to ecosystems, which consist of organisms and the physical environment that they interact with. A phytocoensis has a distribution which can be mapped. Phytosociology has a system for describing and classifying these phytocoenoses in a hierarchy, known as syntaxonomy, and this system has a nomenclature. The science is most advanced in Europe, Africa and Asia.
In the United States this concept was largely rejected in favour of studying environments in more individualistic terms regarding species, where specific associations of plants occur randomly because of individual preferences and responses to gradients, and there are no sharp boundaries between phytocoenoses. The terminology 'plant community' is usually used in the US for a habitat consisting of a number of specific plant species.
It has been a successful approach in the scope of contemporary vegetation science because of its highly descriptive and predictive powers, and its usefulness in nature management issues.
History
The term 'phytosociology' was coined in 1896 by Józef Paczoski.[1] The term 'phytocoenology' was coined by Helmut Gams in 1918.[1][2] While the terminology phytocoenosis grew to be most popular in France, Switzerland, Germany and the Soviet Union, the terminology phytosociology remained in use in some European countries.[1]
Phytosociology is a further refinement of the phytogeography introduced by Alexander von Humboldt at the very beginning of the 19th century.[1][3][4][5]
Phytocoenology was initially considered to be a subdiscipline of 'geobotany'.[2]
In Scandinavia the concept of plant associations was popular at an early date. Hampus von Post (1842, 1862),[6] Ragnar Hult (1881, 1898),[7] Thore Christian Elias Fries (1913),[8] Gustaf Einar Du Rietz (1921).[9] Missing Danish guy.
- Rübel (1922, 1930),[10][11] Pavillard (1927),[12]
- Schröter & Kirchner (1886–1902),[13] Flahault & Carl Joseph Schröter (1910),[14]
In the Soviet Union an important botanist to apply and popularise the science was Vladimir Sukachev.[15]
The science of phytosociology has hardly penetrated into the English-speaking world, where the
Usage today
Modern phytosociology for largely follows the work of Józef Paczoski in Poland, Josias Braun-Blanquet in France and Gustaf Einar Du Rietz in Sweden.[5]
In Europe a complete classification system has been developed to describe the vegetation types found across the continent. These are used as habitat-type classifications in the
Overview
The aim of phytosociology is to achieve a sufficient empirical model of vegetation using combinations of plant species (or subspecies, i.e.
Relevé
The first step in phytosociology is gathering data. This is done with what is known as a relevé, a plot in which all the species are identified, and their abundance both vertically and in area are calculated. Other data are also recorded for a relevé: the geographic location, environmental factors and vegetation structure. Boolean operators and (formerly) tables are used to sort the data. As the calculations needed are difficult and tedious to do manually, modern ecologists feed the relevé data into software programs that use algorithms to crunch the numbers.[21]
Association model
The basic unit of syntaxonomy, the organisation and nomenclature of phytosociological relationships, is the "association", defined by its characteristic combination of plant taxa. Sometimes other habitat features such as the management by humans (mowing regime, for example), physiognomy and/or the stage in ecological succession may also be considered. Such an association is usually viewed as a discrete phytocoenose. Similar and neighbouring associations can be grouped in larger ecological conceptual units, with a group of plant associations called an "alliance". Similar alliances may be grouped in "orders" and orders in vegetation "classes". The setting of syntaxa in such a hierarchy makes up the syntaxonomical system.
The most important workers to define the modern system were initially
Today an International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature[24][25] exists, in which the rules for naming syntaxa are given. Its use has increased among botanists.[24]
In Anglo-American ecology, the association concept is mostly linked to the work of the mid-twentieth century botanist
Vegetation complexes
Modern phytosociologists try to include higher levels of complexity in the perception of vegetation, namely by describing whole
Data collections
Phytosociological data contain information collected in relevés (or plots) listing each species cover-abundance values and the measured environmental variables. This data is conveniently databanked in a program like TURBOVEG[28] allowing for editing, storage and export to other applications.
Data is usually classified and sorted using TWINSPAN[29] in host programs like JUICE to create realistic species-relevé associations. Further patterns are investigated using clustering and resemblance methods, and ordination techniques available in software packages like CANOCO[30] or the R-package vegan.[31]
See also
- Josias Braun-Blanquet
- Józef Paczoski
- António Rodrigo Pinto da Silva
- Victor Westhoff
- Biogeography
- JUICE - program for phytosociologists
- Plant community
- Phytogeography
References
- ^ a b c d e Rabotnov TA. 1970-1979. Phytocoenology. In: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd ed.
- ^ a b Gams, Helmut (27 March 1918). "Prinzipienfragen der Vegetationsforschung. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsklärung und Methodik der Bioeaenologie" (PDF). Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich. 63 (1): 293–493. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- ^ Humboldt, A. von & Bonpland, A. 1805. Essai sur la geographie des plantes. Accompagné d'un tableau physique des régions équinoxiales fondé sur des mesures exécutées, depuis le dixiéme degré de latitude boréale jusqu'au dixiéme degré de latitude australe, pendant les années 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802 et 1803. Paris: Schöll, [1].
- E.C. Otté and Henry G. Bohn (1850). London: H.G. Bohn, [3].
- ^ a b c Decocq, G. (2016). Moving from Patterns to Processes: A Challenge for the Phytosociology of the Twenty-First Century? In: Box, E. O. (Ed.). Vegetation Structure and Function at Multiple Spatial, Temporal and Conceptual Scales. Springer. pp. 407-424
- ^ von Post, Hampus (1842). "Några ord till Fäderneslandets yngre Botanister". Bot. Not. 1842: 97–107. Archived from the original on 2018-05-20. Retrieved 2016-10-04.
- ^ Hult, Ragnar (1881). Försök till analytisk behandling af växtformationerna ("Attempt at an analytic treatment of plant communities"). Meddelanden af Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica, 8, pp. 1–155. Doctoral dissertation (University of Helsinki). Full text.
- ^ Fries, T.C.E. (1913). Botanische Untersuchungen im nördlichsten Schweden. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der alpinen und subalpinen Vegetation in Torne Lappmark. Akademische Abhandlung. Vetenskapliga och praktiska undersökningar i Lappland. Flora och fauna Nº 2, p. 1-361, [4].
- ^ Du Rietz, G.E. (1921). Zur methodologischen Grundlage der modernen Pflanzensoziologie. Akadem. Abh. Upsala (Thesis, Uppsala), 272 pp.
- ^ Rübel, E.F. (1922). Geobotanische Untersuchungsmethoden. Gebrüder Borntraeger, Berlin
- ^ Rübel, E.F. (1930). Pflanzengesellschaften der Erde. Bern-Berlin: H. Huber, [5].
- ^ Pavillard, J (1927). "Les Tendances Actuelles de la Phytosociologie". Arch. Bot. Bull. Mens. 6: 89–112.
- ^ Schröter, C. & Kirchner, O. 1886–1902. Die Vegetation des Bodensees. Stettner, Lindau, DE
- ^ Flahaut, C. & Schröter, C. (1910). Phytogeographische Nomenklatur. Berichte und Worschläge. IIIe Congrès International de Botanique, Bruxelles, 14–22 mai. Zürcher & Furrer, Zürich, CH.
- .
- ^ Clements, F.E. (1905). Research Methods in Ecology. Lincoln, Neb.,University Pub. Co., [6].
- ^ Clements, F.E. 1916. Plant Succession. Publication 242, Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC.
- JSTOR 2256278.
- ^ Tansley, A.G. (Ed). 1911. Types of British Vegetation: by Members of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, [7].
- ^ Sharma, P. D. (2009). Ecology and Environment. Rastogi: Meerut, p. 140-142, [8].
- ^ ISBN 978-0-08-045405-4.
- ^ Nicolson, M. (1993). National Styles, Divergent Classifications: A comparative case study from the history of French and American plant ecology. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science Past and Present, 8, 139-186.
- ^ Braun-Blanquet, J. (1932). Plant sociology; the study of plant communities. New York and London, McGraw-Hill
- ^ JSTOR 3236580.
- Wikidata Q116454846.
- ^ See, for example: "Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas" by Donald Worster, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- ^ See, for example: "The Unity of Nature: Wholeness and Disintegration in Ecology and Science" by Alan Marshall, Imperial College Press/WorldScientific, 2002
- JSTOR 3237010.
- ^ Hill MO (1979) TWINSPAN: A FORTRAN Programme for arranging multivariate data in an ordered two-way table by classification of the individuals and attributes. Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- ^ ter Braak CJF, Šmilauer P (2002) CANOCO Reference manual and CanoDraw for Windows User’s guide: Software for Canonical Community Ordination (version 4.5). Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY
- ^ Oksanen, J. (2010) (March 11, 2010). "Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Communities in R: vegan tutorial" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 20, 2019. Retrieved April 20, 2010.
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External links
- International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature, 3rd edition
- Landscape disagreement with phytosociological theories
- Phytosociology Methods of Ecosystem Analysis, yale.edu
- Technical University of Braunschweig, Working Group for Vegetation Ecology and Experimental Plant Sociology, accessed 20 April 2010