stratification.pptx

Stratification

1. S T R A T I F I CATION R e p o r t e r : G e m i m a C . R a m o s

2. Stratification in the field of ecology refers to the vertical layering of a habitat; the arrangement of vegetation in layers. It classifies the layers (sing. stratum, pl. strata) of vegetation largely according to the different heights to which their plants grow. The individual layers are inhabited by different animal and plant communities (stratozones). S t r a t i fication

3. ✓ Natural climax communities usually exhibit some form of stratification, by which the populations that make up the community are distributed into defined vertical or horizontal strata. S t r a t i f i c a t i o n

4. For example, the bottom-up stratification of a forest community could be divided into: o The subterranean layer o The forest floor o The herbaceous vegetation o The shrub layer o The canopy layer

5.  Organisms may not occupy only one stratum, moving between the layers often on a diurnal basis. For example, a bird that feeds on the forest floor during the day but roosts within the canopy.

6.  A community may occur along a horizontal stratification where there is transition between successional stages and ecotones.

7. Ecotone Communities occur in a range of different sizes, and the boundaries of each are often not well defined. An ecotone is the transitional area between two biomes, where communities meet and may integrate.

8. The word Ecotone was coined by Alfred Russel Wallace , in 1859 who first observed the abrupt boundary between two biomes. This word is formed as a combination of Ecology plus tone, from the Greek tonos or tension, which means a place where ecologies are in Tension .

9. Many organisms may be part of several different communities because they have various geographic ranges, and density peaks; if these boundaries are wide, it is known as an open community. A community in which the species all have similar geographic ranges and density peaks, resulting in a discrete unit where the boundaries are well defined, is called a closed community.

10.  Open communities tend to occur where there is a long environmental gradient, such as that of soil moisture content or the altitudinal slope of a mountain. Organisms with different tolerances to the conditions occur at different spatial scales along the gradients.

11.  Closed communities occur where there is a sharp change in the vegetative structure or the physical environment, for example, an area of a beach, which separates the water from the land.

12. Ecotones are generally very hard to define because within an ecosystem there are usually organisms, which can disperse between both open and closed communities.

13. T H A N K Y O U ! ❤️ S u b m i t t ed t o : M s . A n g e l A n n A l e j a n d r o