有关托福阅读真题练习
托福阅读真题练习2017
The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems
Plant communities assemble themselves flexibly, and their particular structure depends on the specific history of the area. Ecologists use the term “succession” to refer to the changes that happen in plant communities and ecosystems over time. The first community in a succession is called a pioneer community, while the long-lived community at the end of succession is called a climax community. Pioneer and successional plant communities are said to change over periods from 1 to 500 years. These changes—in plant numbers and the mix of species—are cumulative. Climax communities themselves change but over periods of time greater than about 500 years.
An ecologist who studies a pond today may well find it relatively unchanged in a year’s time. Individual fish may be replaced, but the number of fish will tend to be the same from one year to the next. We can say that the properties of an ecosystem are more stable than the individual organisms that compose the ecosystem.
At one time, ecologists believed that species diversity made ecosystems stable. They believed that the greater the diversity the more stable the ecosystem. Support for this idea came from the observation that long-lasting climax communities usually have more complex food webs and more species diversity than pioneer communities. Ecologists concluded that the apparent stability of climax ecosystems depended on their complexity. To take an extreme example, farmlands dominated by a single crop are so unstable that one year of bad weather or the invasion of a single pest can destroy the entire crop. In contrast, a complex climax community, such as a temperate forest, will tolerate considerable damage from weather to pests.
The question of ecosystem stability is complicated, however. The first problem is that ecologists do not all agree what “stability” means. Stability can be defined as simply lack of change. In that case, the climax community would be considered the most stable, since, by definition, it changes the least over time. Alternatively, stability can be defined as the speed with which an ecosystem returns to a particular form
-
大学生社区志愿服务社会实践报告(精选5篇)
忙碌而又充实的社会实践已经告一段落了,相信大家这段时间来吸收了不少的新思想,是时候进行一个全面的总结了。千万不能认为实践报告随便应付就可以,以下是小编收集整理的大学生社区志愿服务社会实践报告,希望对大家有所帮助。大学生社区志愿服务社会实践报告篇1爱...
-
校学生会宣传部工作总结通用8篇
总结是对取得的成绩、存在的问题及得到的经验和教训等方面情况进行评价与描述的一种书面材料,他能够提升我们的书面表达能力,不如我们来制定一份总结吧。那么如何把总结写出新花样呢?下面是小编整理的校学生会宣传部工作总结,欢迎阅读与收藏。校学生会宣传部工作总...
-
地理教学教师个人总结
总结就是对一个时期的学习、工作或其完成情况进行一次全面系统的回顾和分析的书面材料,它能使我们及时找出错误并改正,让我们来为自己写一份总结吧。总结怎么写才能发挥它的作用呢?下面是小编收集整理的地理教学教师个人总结,仅供参考,大家一起来看看吧。地理教学教...
-
有关月考反思13篇
在发展不断提速的社会中,我们的工作之一就是课堂教学,反思是思考过去的事情,从中总结经验教训。那么优秀的反思是什么样的呢?以下是小编帮大家整理的有关月考反思,欢迎阅读与收藏。有关月考反思1月考作为学期中的阶段性检测,可以客观地测评出学生每月的学习效果,又为...