Community Ecology

community ecology, study of the organization and functioning of communities, which are assemblages of interacting populations of the species living within a particular area or habitat.

As populations of species interact with one another, they form biological communities. The number of interacting species in these communities and the complexity of their relationships exemplify what is meant by the term “biodiversity.” Structures arise within communities as species interact, and food chains, food webs, guilds, and other interactive webs are created. These relationships change over evolutionary time as species reciprocally adapt to one another through the process of coevolution. The overall structure of biological communities, the organization of interspecific interactions, and the effects the coevolutionary process has on the biological community are described below.