Ecology, Ecosystems and Coastal Management

Species Interaction

Organisms live within an ecological community, which is defined as an assemblage of populations of at least two different species that interact directly and indirectly within a defined geographic area. Species interactions form the basis for many ecosystem properties and processes such as nutrient cycling and food webs. The nature of these interactions can vary depending on the evolutionary context and environmental conditions in which they occur. As a result, ecological interactions between individual organisms and entire species are often difficult to define and measure and are frequently dependent on the scale and context of the interactions. Using these classes of interactions as a framework when studying an ecological community allows scientists to describe naturally occurring processes and aids in predicting how human alterations to the natural world may affect ecosystem properties and processes. At the coarsest level, ecological interactions can be defined as either intra-specific or inter-specific.