Community Ecology: Species Living Together

This historical Ecology URL is preserved because it has an established public identity. Community ecology is not yet a standalone lecture in the current ten-lecture sequence, so this page remains a concise compatibility learning resource rather than redirecting learners to an unrelated lesson.

A biological community consists of populations of different species that occur together and interact. Community ecology examines competition, predation, herbivory, parasitism, mutualism, commensalism, facilitation, species diversity, dominance, succession, disturbance, and the organization of interaction networks.

Community patterns arise from both biological interactions and environmental filtering. The presence or abundance of one species can affect others directly through feeding or competition, indirectly through food-web pathways, or by altering habitat structure. Interpretation therefore requires attention to scale, history, abiotic conditions, and the strengths of multiple interacting processes.

For the currently certified sequence, begin at the Ecology course index.