Unrelated sessile communities obey the same disturbance-diversity rule

Evidence

At the same time as I was wading the Kickapoo, another scientist, Robert Paine, was exploring a different gradient of disturbance frequency, wave action on the rocky intertidal zone of the Washington coast. He was looking at communities of algae, mussels, and barnacles, which may seem to have little in common with mosses. And yet both are sessile, attached to rock and engaged in a competition for space. He observed an intriguing pattern—-few species lived where the wave action was constant and fewer still lived on rocks which were virtually undisturbed. But in between, where disturbance was intermediate in frequency, species diversity was extremely high. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 300

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel discovery between a stream ecologist and marine ecologist — a nice lesson on convergent independent observation across ecosystems. — connects to: Disturbance is an act of renewal when its frequency is balanced — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 305; Landscape-level diversity in the BWCA depends on a fire-made mosaic of successional stages. — Miron L. Heinselman, Fire in the Virgin Forests of the…, 411; Ecosystem resilience increases with species diversity against species loss — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 314 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• The same disturbance-diversity dynamics governing forest trees also structure moss communities on logs #corroborates (0.90) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 371
• Ecological rules asserting themselves across scale reveal hidden order uniting all living systems #expands (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 358