Learning Objectives
16.1.1 Describe the ways ecologists delineate communities.
16.1.2 Explain why ecologists use subsets of species to define communities and list some of the subsets used.
Ecologists define communities as groups of interacting species that occur together at the same place and time.
Interactions among multiple species and their physical environment give communities their character and function. Whether we are dealing with a desert, a kelp forest, or the gut of an ungulate, the existence of the community is dependent on the individual species that are present and on how they interact with one another and their physical surroundings. As we will see in this chapter and others in this unit, the relative importance of species interactions and the physical environment, which can vary among communities, is a major focus of research for community ecologists.
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