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This volume provides an overview of recent advances in the ecology of various kinds of non-forested ecosystems on a variety of topics. These include species diversity and the factors that control species diversity, and impacts of disturbances.

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recruitment of adult plants in entire communities, and all of them focus on changes in total densities of A central issue of plant ecology is the understanding individuals and do not refer to changes in community of the relative role of different life history stages in structure (Moles and Drake 1999; Rebollo et al. successful plant recruitment. The consecutive stages 2001; Goldberg et al. 2001). This ?eld of research of seed, seedling, and adult are related to each other has hardly been explored empirically, and we think it in a complex way that largely depends on species and may reveal interesting mechanisms for the regulation the in?uence of physical and biological factors of individual density and species diversity in plant (Goldberg et al. 2001), for example, irrigation and communities. At the functional group level (which grazing. As a result of relationships between these sorts species according to common features), we stages, the consequences of an ecological factor expect differences depending on growth form depend on the way that its effects propagate onto the (grasses versus forbs) and depending on seed mass following stage of the recruitment process. As far as (differences between small-seeded, medium-seeded, we know, there are no published studies that have and large-seeded species). Some authors (Goldberg addressed this subject. et al. 2001; Rebollo et al. 2001) studying annual In this article, we characterize the relationships plant communities have found greater seedling between the three plant developmental stages.

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