[Self-recovery of plant communities: examples, mechanisms, and approaches for description]

Autogenic (self-recovering) plant communities that need no transitional stages of succession for their recovery after damage are widespread in different areas of the Globe. They are typical for tundras, but also common in boreal forests, alpine belts, deserts and Mediterranean biomes. Such communities usually dominate the landscape. The authors examine in details the communities of cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum) wet tussock tundras of North-Eastern Asia and Alaska, the dryad (Dryas punctata) lichen dry patchy tundras of the same region and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) lichen-feathermoss forests on fluvial-glacial deposits of Fennoscandia and Russian Plain. Although authogenic plant communities are serial, they exist side by side with proper edaphic variants of climaxes but don't appear to be replaced by the latter, being even more stable. Moreover, they even seem to "compete" for the space with the climax communities. Stabilization of autogenic communities is primarily induced by the impact of abiotic disturbance factors, like periodic fires, permafrost action or scree sliding, and afterwards maintained by several mechanisms of community structure organization. Such mechanisms of self-recovery act at the levels of both plant population and community as a whole. Specific adaptions of dominant species to typical kinds of disturbance (at a scale of either the community, or its local parts) illustrate the first level, whereas close co-adaptations between dominants and accompanying species refer to the second one. Such co-adaptations are present as complementarity of plant life strategies and growth forms within a community and/or as a shifting-mosaic steady state which leads to quick recovery of local disturbances. Among different possible approaches to simulation of community autogenesis those of combinatorial simulation seem to be especially perspective.