communities

The challenge of community restoration is to understand and exploit the principles of ecological succession at all seral stages, by complementing and accelerating the processes of colonisation and regeneration. The main aim is to construct self-sustaining,appropriate communities, connected in the landscape, that meet conservation, landscape and crop production goals. Research, to date, has been biased towards the plant and soil components with little consideration for the animal element.

The 'Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis' (IDH) is one mechanism suggested to explain indefinite species coexistence. Hutchinson's original concept of the IDH was of a mechanism based on patch dynamics, and logical consideration shows that IDH works only if interpreted this way. Dependence on patch dynamics distinguishes IDH from Gradual Climate Change (GCC), though they are distinct also in terms of premature death of individuals, species selectivity, and the suddenness and transience of the perturbation.