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Community Ecology - Module 5 Dr. James Danoff-Burg Columbia University Community Ecology • Next step up the ecological hierarchy from populations • Definition: A population of species cooccurring populations • Together, they comprise the biotic component of the ecosystem Community Function • More than a Collective properties of participant species • Emergent properties – ecosystem stability – limits to similarity of competing species Community Drama Players • Producers (Module 6) – Primarily plants and bacteria • Consumers (Module 7) – Herbivores, Predators, Parasites, Parasitoids, Mutualists • Decomposers (Module 8) – Vertebrates, Invertebrates, Fungi, Bacteria Community Features • • • • • • • • • Richness Abundance Diversity Evenness Community Similarity Trophic Levels Feeding Guilds Endemism Vertical Structure Community Features • Richness – number of species • Abundance – number of individuals – either per species or gross abundance Richness and Abundance • Most commonly used features of community for summarizing • Most intuitive BUT • Could provide misleading results • Why? Problems w/ Richness & Abundance • Edge species are often invasive/exotic, anthropophilic, and are everywhere • May lead people to conserve areas that are less important • Do not take into account endemicity Other Community Features • • • • • • Trophic Levels Feeding Guilds Evenness of species Community Similarities Vertical & Horizontal Structuring Diversity (next most commonly used) Diversity Indices • Definition – Combination of richness & abundance, combine these data in different fashions – Information Theory based (assessing certainty of sampling all species present) • Sensitivities – Unevenness in abundance often leads to strange results (e.g., deer herbivory study) – Unequal collecting effort Diversity Indices • Methodology – enter data, calculate indices – general comparison of relative sizes – some advocate for parametric statistics • Common Indices – Shannon-Wiener – Simpson – Brilluoin – Fisher’s alpha Today’s Activity - Brazil • What is the influence of plant biodiversity in home gardens on that of beneficial and harmful insects? • Could advocate for intercropping, a more sustainable form of farming Methods • Sample insects using pan traps (water, salt, soap) • Use three home gardens of different overall plant biodiversity Methods II • • • • • • • Remove insects from pan traps Isolate parasitoids Isolate homopterans Sort both to morphospecies Total richness and abundance Input into computer program Calculate diversity indices Methods III • • • • • • Compare plots to each other Make bar graphs of values and indices Use photos: sites, process, and animals Write up a paper of the class Use PowerPoint Football at 5:30