| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Alpha diversity | the degree of difference between species found on different sites of the same habitat or community type |
| Association | groupings of plant species that are typically found growing together in similar habitats |
| Beta diversity | the degree of difference in the species composition between two different habitats or community types |
| Biome | very large areas of the earth's surface that have a similar climate and vegetation |
| Community | all the different populations of organisms that live and interact with each other within a prescribed area |
| Community type | the collection of species that is generally found in a specific type of habitat |
| Dominance type | plant associations that are defined and described on the basis of the one or several plant species that structurally dominate them |
| Ecological equivalents | widely separated and unrelated species that are similar in morphology and behavior. Widely separated, but physiognomically and structurally similar vegetation formations |
| Ecotone | the geographic boundary between two different adjacent communities |
| Formation | a classification of vegetation based upon structure |
| Growth form | a classification of plants on the basis of their morphology |
| Individualistic community concept | Gleason's concept that species are distributed in the environment according to their individual resource requirements and not due to interactions with other species |
| Life form | a classification of plants on the basis of physiognomy and life history |
| Life zone | elevational and latitudinal bands of similar climate and vegetation |
| Old growth forest | forest that has not experienced large disturbances or human land clearance for hundreds of years |
| Ordination analysis | the study of how species distributions relate to the environment, including how species ranges and densities are distributed along environmental gradients |
| Primary forest | forest which has not experienced significant human modification or land clearance |
| Releve | a rapid, semi-quantitative way of conducting a census of a plant community |
| Second growth forest | the forest vegetation that initially develops following a large disturbance or human land clearance |
| Species evenness | the degree to which the number of individual organisms are evenly divided between the different species of the community. An estimate is obtainable from the Shannon Index value (H') using the equation E = H'/In S |
| Stand | an individual plot of plants, particularly forest trees |
| Superorganism community concept | Clements' concept that the species in communities had evolved together over long periods of time and were highly dependent upon each other, much like the individual organs in an animal depended upon the functioning of all the other organs |
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