Environmental conditions play a strong role in limiting community membership
A species may be able to get to a community but fail to become a member of the community because it is physiologically unable to tolerate the environmental or abiotic conditions there (see Figure 19.4B).
Such physiological constraints can be quite obvious. For example, if we return to our thought experiment of viewing a landscape from the top of a mountain, it is reasonable to assume that the abiotic attributes of the lakes we see make them good places for fishes, plankton, and aquatic insects, but not for terrestrial plants. Similarly, lakes might be good habitat for certain species of fish, plankton, and aquatic insect, but not for all of them. Some of these species depend on fast-flowing water and are thus restricted to streams. These differences among abiotic environments are obvious constraints (or requirements, depending on how you look at it) that largely determine where particular species can and cannot occur within a region. There are many examples throughout this book that demonstrate how physiological constraints can control the distributions and abundances of species—see, for example, the discussions of aspen (Concept 4.1), creosote bush and saguaro cactus (Concept 9.3), and the barnacle Semibalanus balanoides (Concept 9.3).In our earlier discussion of species introductions by ballast water, it was clear that humans transport many more species than can actually survive in the new locations to which they are carried. For example, the majority of organisms released with ballast water find themselves in coastal waters that do not have the temperature, salinity, or light regimes they need to survive or grow. Luckily, many of these individuals die before they can become a threat to the native community. But ecologists know, based on examples such as the Caulerpa taxifolia invasion in the Mediterranean (see the Case Study in Chapter 16), that it is not wise to rely on physiological constraints to exclude potential invaders from a community. It may be that, with multiple introductions, particular individuals with slightly different physiological capabilities can survive and reproduce in an environment once thought uninhabitable by individuals of their species.
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