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Ecological Succession · Q36

Q.Name the pioneer community typically found at the start of succession

(a) on bare rock and
(b) in a shallow pond, and describe, in general terms, the nature of the final stage that both eventually tend towards.
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Step 1. On bare rock, virtually no organism can establish itself directly on the exposed surface, so the pioneer community consists of extremely hardy, drought-tolerant lichens, typically starting with crustose lichens that can physically and chemically weather the rock, followed later by foliose lichens and mosses, gradually building up a thin initial soil layer. Step 2. In a shallow pond, the pioneer community instead consists of free-floating and submerged aquatic organisms, chiefly phytoplankton, together with rooted submerged hydrophytes, which begin the long process of trapping sediment and adding organic matter to the water body. Step 3. Although these two pioneer communities are about as different as possible -- one adapted to extreme dryness, the other to standing water -- both successions are described as proceeding, over a long enough period, through a series of intermediate seral stages toward a broadly similar final s …

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