Plant demography

TY - ENCYC

T1 - Plant demography

AU - Damgaard, Christian Frølund

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Plant demography is a relatively mature scientific discipline, but it is important to critical assess the currently used terminology and methodology in order to align the empirical studies of plant populations with the typical features of plant life history. The terminology and methodology of demography has historically been developed in the study of human and animal populations. However, plants are qualitative different from animals in several important aspects and these differences have important implications for the study of plant demographic processes. Plant demographic processes are controlled by competitive interactions with neighboring plants in most terrestrial habitats. This fact together with the sedentary lifeform of plant species has important consequences for the investigation of plant demographic processes, which often only make sense in the light of local plant density and competitive growth. Furthermore, limited dispersal distances, which often leads to spatially aggregated plant populations and may affect the possible life history strategies, needs to be included in the population ecological modeling to a larger extent than presently is the current practice in most empirical plant demographic studies. For many plant species, it is not possible to distinguish individual plants from each other, and while the number of individuals or density is the theoretically most natural measure of plant abundance, this measure is not a relevant measure in many habitat types, e.g., grasslands. Consequently, it is important to develop new methods for measuring demographic process for such plant species.

AB - Plant demography is a relatively mature scientific discipline, but it is important to critical assess the currently used terminology and methodology in order to align the empirical studies of plant populations with the typical features of plant life history. The terminology and methodology of demography has historically been developed in the study of human and animal populations. However, plants are qualitative different from animals in several important aspects and these differences have important implications for the study of plant demographic processes. Plant demographic processes are controlled by competitive interactions with neighboring plants in most terrestrial habitats. This fact together with the sedentary lifeform of plant species has important consequences for the investigation of plant demographic processes, which often only make sense in the light of local plant density and competitive growth. Furthermore, limited dispersal distances, which often leads to spatially aggregated plant populations and may affect the possible life history strategies, needs to be included in the population ecological modeling to a larger extent than presently is the current practice in most empirical plant demographic studies. For many plant species, it is not possible to distinguish individual plants from each other, and while the number of individuals or density is the theoretically most natural measure of plant abundance, this measure is not a relevant measure in many habitat types, e.g., grasslands. Consequently, it is important to develop new methods for measuring demographic process for such plant species.

KW - Age-structured models

KW - Competition

KW - Competitive growth

KW - Dispersal

KW - Fecundity

KW - Mortality

KW - Plant abundance

KW - Plant demography

KW - Reproduction

KW - Sedentary lifeform

KW - Size-structured models

KW - Spatial occurrence model

KW - Survival

KW - Vital rates

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079264548&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10920-0

DO - 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10920-0

M3 - Encyclopedia entry

VL - 4

SP - 583

EP - 588

BT - Encyclopedia of Ecology

PB - Elsevier

ER -