In this video, we're going to begin our lesson on ecological succession. Ecological succession is a very gradual and slow process by which a community structure changes over time. It's important to recall from our previous lesson videos that the community structure includes a variety of different aspects and attributes, including species richness, relative abundance, species diversity, all of the interactions in the community, and physical attributes as well. Changes to any one of these aspects would alter the community structure over time. Ecological succession occurs because each existing community actually alters its environment, and the change in the environment creates new opportunities that can allow new species to thrive in the community.
The thriving of new species changes the community structure over time. Theoretically, ecological succession is occurring at all times in all communities. However, it's often a very gradual and slow process where significant changes can take hundreds or thousands of years in some cases. Disturbances can somewhat reset the process of ecological succession, which also accelerates the process. It's important to note that the final and most stable stage of ecological succession is what we call the climax community.
The climax community can be thought of as the end goal or the end result of ecological succession. However, it's important to note that we have "final" in quotes because even the climax community will still undergo ecological succession, but at a significantly reduced rate. It is the most stable stage of ecological succession, but ecological succession still occurs even in the climax community, just at a slower rate. Notice in this image on the left-hand side, we have a community that just consists of these grasses. But over time, ecological succession occurs and the community structure changes, creating this forest that you can see here.
If this forest were the climax community, it would be considered the final and most stable stage of ecological succession. But once again, ecological succession can still be occurring even in the climax community. Moving forward in our course, we're going to talk about two different types of ecological succession: primary ecological succession and secondary ecological succession. I’ll see you in our next video to talk more about that.
