Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

What are Populations and Communities?

What are Populations and Communities?

Ecological Niches

Ecological Niches

All organisms have a position within an ecosystem. The complete set of living and nonliving factors—including food resources, climate, and terrain—that define the position of a given organism are collectively referred to as the organism’s ecological niche.

Keystone Species

Keystone Species

Measures of species biodiversity, such as richness (i.e., the number of species present) and evenness (i.e., their relative abundance), describe an ecological community’s structure. Many factors affect community structure, including abiotic factors (e.g., sunlight and nutrients), disturbances (e.g., fire or flood), species interactions (e.g., predation or competition), and chance events (e.g., foreign species invasion). Certain species—such as keystone species—also play a...

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.

Conservation of Declining Populations

Conservation of Declining Populations

Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.

Ecological Disturbance

Ecological Disturbance

An ecological disturbance is a temporary disruption in the environment resulting from abiotic, biotic, or anthropogenic factors, causing a pronounced change in an ecosystem. The impact of an ecological disturbance, which can depend on its intensity, frequency, and spatial distribution, plays a significant role in shaping the species diversity within the ecosystem.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Emergent synergistic lysosomal toxicity of chemical mixtures in molluscan blood cells (hemocytes).

Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987)·2018

Same author

The influence of temperature and salinity on energy partitioning in the marine nematode Diplolaimelloides bruciei.

Oecologia·2017

Same author

The effect of temperature on the respiration rate of meiofauna.

Oecologia·2017

Same author

Benthic nutrient flux in a shallow coastal environment.

Oecologia·2017

Same author

Species size distributions in marine benthic communities.

Oecologia·2017

Same author

Aspects of feeding, including estimates of gut residence time, in three mytilid species (Bivalvia, Mollusca) at two contrasting sites in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.

Oecologia·2017

Same journal

Unveiling the microhabitat puzzle: how spatial heterogeneity shapes cave invertebrate biodiversity across scales.

Oecologia·2026

Same journal

Soil microbial drought history affects physiological response of select tree species to drought stress.

Oecologia·2026

Same journal

Unveiling the effects of interspecific competition: ecological consequences of competitive release after damming on Salvelinus curilus populations in a three-salmonid species coexistence system.

Oecologia·2026

Same journal

Orchid bee diversity responds positively to forest cover and landscape heterogeneity in the Brazilian Savanna.

Oecologia·2026

Same journal

The impact of native vertebrates on enemy release and plant functional traits during community assembly.

Oecologia·2026

Same journal

Nutrient fluctuations alter effects of litter diversity of invasive species on native communities.

Oecologia·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Automatic Image Processing to Determine the Community Size Structure of Riverine Macroinvertebrates

Automatic Image Processing to Determine the Community Size Structure of Riverine Macroinvertebrates

Published on: January 13, 2023

Quantifying structural redundancy in ecological communities.

K R Clarke¹, R M Warwick¹

¹Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, West Hoe, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK Fax: +44 1752 633101, , , , , , GB.

|March 18, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study introduces a method to quantify structural redundancy in ecological communities. High redundancy suggests that many species can be interchanged without altering community patterns, indicating resilience.

Keywords:

Compensation potential Key words Multivariate analysis Marine macrobenthos Oil pollution Randomisation test

More Related Videos

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Published on: April 18, 2025

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Published on: September 25, 2021

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Automatic Image Processing to Determine the Community Size Structure of Riverine Macroinvertebrates

Automatic Image Processing to Determine the Community Size Structure of Riverine Macroinvertebrates

Published on: January 13, 2023

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Published on: April 18, 2025

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Published on: September 25, 2021

Area of Science:

Ecology
Marine Biology
Environmental Science

Background:

Community composition is influenced by environmental variability.
Species can be interchangeable in characterizing ecological samples, a phenomenon known as structural redundancy.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a quantitative method for assessing structural redundancy in ecological communities.
To apply this method to real-world ecological data, including marine macrobenthos affected by an oil spill and natural variability.

Main Methods:

Developed a technique to extract species subsets ('response units') with multivariate response patterns matching the whole community.
Applied the method to data from the Amoco-Cadiz oil spill in the Bay of Morlaix and interannual variability in Northumberland.

Main Results:

Structural redundancy was found to be remarkably high across all studied examples.
Response units exhibited consistent taxonomic and functional structures and synchronized abundance changes over time.
Randomization tests confirmed the taxonomic and functional coherence of response units.

Conclusions:

The developed method effectively quantifies structural redundancy in ecological communities.
High structural redundancy may serve as an indirect indicator of an assemblage's resilience or compensation potential.
Findings have implications for understanding ecosystem stability in the face of environmental change.