Chapter 3, Problem 10A

Summary Introduction

To determine:

How the successional stages will be different from the primary succession.

Introduction:

The ecological succession can be defined as a process, which causes the changes in the species structure in an ecological community over the time. It could be of two types, primary and secondary. Primary succession takes place where the life has not existed in past, and the secondary succession takes place, where some life form has existed before.

Explanation of Solution

In the primary succession, where there was no life form before, no soil exists, the climatic conditions are generally not favorable, the spores of the plants are absent no source of nutrition is present. Everything in primary succession needs to be started from basic level. In the case of secondary succession, the climatic conditions are not that harsh, generally they have more chances of having spores and seeds of the plants. Also, the conditions of soil become favorable to help the new vegetation flourish in a less amount of time. The successional stage is when the vegetation has already started flourishing and more species are getting introduced.