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Community Structure

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Insect Ecology: Concepts to Management

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Abstract

In the last few chapters, we have discussed about ecology at population level. The final chapters of this book deals with ecology at community level. Community ecology can be conveniently studied under community structure and community function. Community structure deals with species diversity and richness in a community and factors that influence the diversity and richness. Various measures diversity of organisms in a community is being dealt in this chapter. Community comprises population of different species living together spatially and temporally. These populations are not static and always interact among themselves and with each other. These interactions range from antagonistic interaction known as “herbivory” and competition where individual of various species living together compete for food and space under different types of competition models such as exploitation competition, interference competition, and apparent competition. If these competitions are very severe it may lead to extinction or migration of one of the competing organism and establishment of new community. However, if the competition is not severe the competing organisms share the common resources in what is known as resource partitioning. The mutualistic interactions that happen within the ecosystem can either one or both or none of the organisms are positively affected. The species interaction within a community is also discussed as predatory–prey interactions and insect–parasitoid interactions. Within this framework, how a predator or parasitoid attack another host insect called prey and how these preys have developed antipredatory or antiparasitic abilities have been discussed. The concept of niche and the factors responsible for molding of niche has been discussed.

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  1. Department of Entomology, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Tirupati, India

    K. V. Hari Prasad

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Prasad, K.V.H. (2022). Community Structure. In: Insect Ecology: Concepts to Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1782-0_11

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