Phytosociology, also known as phytocoenology or simply plant sociology, is the study of groups of species of plant that are usually found together. Phytosociology aims to empirically describe the vegetative environment of a given territory. A specific community of plants is considered a social unit, the product of definite conditions, present and past, and can exist only when such conditions are met. In phyto-sociology, such a unit is known as a phytocoenosis (or phytocoenose). A phytocoenosis is more commonly known as a plant community, and consists of the sum of all plants in a given area. It is a subset of a biocoenosis, which consists of all organisms in a given area. More strictly speaking, a phytocoenosis is a set of plants in area that are interacting with each other through competition or other ecological processes. Coenoses are not equivalent to , which consist of organisms and the physical environment that they interact with. A phytocoensis has a distribution which can be mapped. Phytosociology has a system for describing and classifying these phytocoenoses in a hierarchy, known as syntaxonomy, and this system has a nomenclature. The science is most advanced in Europe, Africa and Asia.
In the United States this concept was largely rejected in favour of studying environments in more individualistic terms regarding species, where specific associations of plants occur randomly because of individual preferences and responses to gradients, and there are no sharp boundaries between phytocoenoses. The terminology 'plant community' is usually used in the US for a habitat consisting of a number of specific plant species.
It has been a successful approach in the scope of contemporary vegetation science because of its highly descriptive and predictive powers, and its usefulness in nature management issues.
Phytosociology is a further refinement of the phytogeography introduced by Alexander von Humboldt at the very beginning of the 19th century.Humboldt, A. von & Bonpland, A. 1805. Essai sur la geographie des plantes. Accompagné d'un tableau physique des régions équinoxiales fondé sur des mesures exécutées, depuis le dixiéme degré de latitude boréale jusqu'au dixiéme degré de latitude australe, pendant les années 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802 et 1803. Paris: Schöll, [2].Alexander von Humboldt (1806). Ideen zu einer Physiognomik der Gewächse. Tübingen: Cotta, [3]. English translation as Ideas for a physiognomy of plants, pp. 210-352 in Views of nature: or Contemplations on the sublime phenomena of creation by E.C. Otté and Henry G. Bohn (1850). London: H.G. Bohn, [4].Decocq, G. (2016). Moving from Patterns to Processes: A Challenge for the Phytosociology of the Twenty-First Century? In: Box, E. O. (Ed.). Structure and Function at Multiple Spatial, Temporal and Conceptual Scales. Springer. pp. 407-424
Phytocoenology was initially considered to be a subdiscipline of 'geobotany'.
In Scandinavia the concept of plant associations was popular at an early date. Hampus von Post (1842, 1862), Ragnar Hult (1881, 1898),Hult, Ragnar (1881). Försök till analytisk behandling af växtformationerna ("Attempt at an analytic treatment of plant communities"). Meddelanden af Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica, 8, pp. 1–155. Doctoral dissertation (University of Helsinki). Full text. Thore Christian Elias Fries (1913),Fries, T.C.E. (1913). Botanische Untersuchungen im nördlichsten Schweden. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der alpinen und subalpinen Vegetation in Torne Lappmark. Akademische Abhandlung. Vetenskapliga och praktiska undersökningar i Lappland. Flora och fauna Nº 2, p. 1-361, [7]. Gustaf Einar Du Rietz (1921).Du Rietz, G.E. (1921). Zur methodologischen Grundlage der modernen Pflanzensoziologie. Akadem. Abh. Upsala (Thesis, Uppsala), 272 pp.
The science of phytosociology has hardly penetrated into the English-speaking world, where the continuum concept of community prevailed, opposed to the concept of a 'society' of plants. Nonetheless it had some early adherents in the United States, notably Frederic Clements in particular, who used the concept to characterise the vegetation of California. Largely following European ideas, he devised his own system to classify habitat types using vegetation.Clements, F.E. (1905). Research Methods in Ecology. Lincoln, Neb.,University Pub. Co., [11].Clements, F.E. 1916. Plant Succession. Publication 242, Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC. Clements most important contribution was his study of succession. His work has seen much local usage. In Britain Arthur Tansley was the first to apply phytosociological concepts to the vegetation of the kingdom in 1911 after learning of its application elsewhere in Europe.Tansley, A.G. (Ed). 1911. Types of British Vegetation: by Members of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, [12]. Tansley eventually broadened the concept and thus came up with the idea of an ecosystem, combining all biotic and abiotic ecological aspects of an environment. The work of Tansley and Clements was quite divergent from the rest.
In Europe a complete classification system has been developed to describe the vegetation types found across the continent. These are used as habitat-type classifications in the NATURA 2000 network and in Habitats Directive legislation. Each phytocoenose has been given a number, and protected areas can thus be classified according to the habitats they contain. In Europe this information is generally mapped per 2 km² blocks for conservation purposes, such as monitoring particularly endangered habitat types, predicting success of , or estimating more specific carrying capacities. Because certain habitats are deemed more imperilled (i.e. having a higher conservation value) than others, a numerical conservation value of a specific site can be approximated.
The most important workers to define the modern system were initially Charles Flahault, with the work of his student Josias Braun-Blanquet being the what is generally considered the final version of syntaxonomical nomenclature. Braun-Blanquet further refined and standardised the work of Flahault and many others when he worked on the phytocoenosis of the southern Cévennes. He established the modern system of classifying vegetation.Nicolson, M. (1993). National Styles, Divergent Classifications: A comparative case study from the history of French and American plant ecology. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science Past and Present, 8, 139-186. Braun-Blanquet's method uses the scientific name of its most characteristic species as namesake, changing the ending of the generic epithet to "- etum" and treating the specific epithet as an adjective. Thus, a particular type of Mesotrophic soil grassland widespread in western Europe and dominated only by the grass Arrhenatherum elatius becomes " Arrhenatheretum elatioris Br.-Bl.". To distinguish between similar plant communities dominated by the same species, other important species are included in the name, but the name is otherwise is formed according to the same rules. Another type of mesotrophic pasture dominated by black knapweed ( Centaurea nigra) and the grass Cynosurus cristatus, which is also widespread in western Europe, is consequently named Centaureo-Cynosuretum cristati Br.-Bl. & Tx.. If the second species is characteristic but notably less dominant than the first one, its genus name may be used as the adjective,Braun-Blanquet, J. (1932). Plant sociology; the study of plant communities. New York and London, McGraw-Hill for example in Pterocarpetum rhizophorosus, a type of tropical scrubland near water which has abundant Pterocarpus officinalis and significant (though not overwhelmingly prominent) red mangrove ( Rhizophora mangle).
Today an International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature exists, in which the rules for naming syntaxa are given. Its use has increased among botanists.
In Anglo-American ecology, the association concept is mostly linked to the work of the mid-twentieth century botanist Henry Gleason, who set it up as an alternative to Frederic Clement's views on the Superorganism.See, for example: "Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas" by Donald Worster, Cambridge University Press, 1994. The philosophical parameters of the association concept have also come under study by environmental philosophers as to how it values and defends the natural environment.See, for example: "The Unity of Nature: Wholeness and Disintegration in Ecology and Science" by Alan Marshall, Imperial College Press/WorldScientific, 2002
Data is usually classified and sorted using TWINSPANHill MO (1979) TWINSPAN: A FORTRAN Programme for arranging multivariate data in an ordered two-way table by classification of the individuals and attributes. Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in host programs like JUICE to create realistic species-relevé associations. Further patterns are investigated using clustering and resemblance methods, and ordination techniques available in software packages like CANOCOter Braak CJF, Šmilauer P (2002) CANOCO Reference manual and CanoDraw for Windows User’s guide: Software for Canonical Community Ordination (version 4.5). Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY or the R-package vegan. PDF
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