Studying the plant diversity in a given ecological community not only allows us to understand the members that live within but also to relate it to the activities carried out by more active members and visitors to the community such as mammals, reptiles, insects and birds.
Furthermore, a long-term study of a dynamic pattern of vegetation types and their relationships to the earth, air, water and fire enable us to understand the past by reconstructing climate history.
Plants are SESSILE. This means that they cannot move like animals to modify (like run away or go under dried leaves) the extremities of their environment. Their responses are closely adapted to the fluctuations.
Some plants and their clones can live longer than we can imagine. Many environmental changes have been recorded in plants as:
Possibilities of studies based on plant and vegetation patterns are limitless. Plant species evolve in the area (NATIVES).
Plant species migrate from other areas (EXOTICS). Ecologists and scientists in related fields study how "natives" and "exotics" interact with each other.
They study what human activities, such as grazing, damming and channeling of rivers, may have disturbed the ecosystem, and what disturbances are significant to cause the invasion of certain species, to mention a few.
When ecologists look at an ecosystem, initially they may think in terms of biodiversity - i.e. what species and how many species are there in the area. They may focus on their favorite kingdom and/or class of organisms, such as plants, birds, mammals, or fish. Or, they may focus on many kingdoms if they are interested in the interactions of these organisms.
Generally, the more diverse the species are in a given system, the more complex a system it is. However, this simple statement is not always true.
In this module, we focus on the plant kingdom.
Questions for thought: