plant ecology
Sign in to saveAlso known as phytoecology, vegetation ecology, floristic ecology, ecology of flora, floral ecology, botanical ecology, ecology of botany
subdiscipline of ecology, studies the abundance and distribution of plants
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- ecology
Show 3 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Plant ecology
- Commons category
- Plant ecology
- described by source
- Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~22 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A tropical plant community on Diego Garcia Rangeland monitoring using Parker 3-step Method, Okanagan Washington 2002 Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the effects of environmental factors upon the abundance of plants, and the interactions among plants and between plants and other organisms. Examples of these are the distribution of temperate deciduous forests in North America, the effects of drought or flooding upon plant survival, and competition among desert plants for water, or effects of herds of grazing animals upon the composition of grasslands.
A global overview of the Earth's major vegetation types is provided by O.W. Archibold. He recognizes 11 major vegetation types: tropical forests, tropical savannas, arid regions (deserts), Mediterranean ecosystems, temperate forest ecosystems, temperate grasslands, coniferous forests, tundra (both polar and high mountain), terrestrial wetlands, freshwater ecosystems and coastal/marine systems. This breadth of topics shows the complexity of plant ecology, since it includes plants from floating single-celled algae up to large canopy forming trees.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “plant ecology” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.