What are diffuse interactions What are indirect interactions

What are diffuse interactions? What are indirect interactions? How can diffuse interactions and indirect interactions affect community structure? How can diffuse and/or indirect interactions affect the responses of ecological communities to disturbance? 100 words or more please

Solution

All living things in the world interact and live in the ecosystem.No organism lives in isolation.Biological interactions are the interactions that involve individuals of the same species (intraspecific interactions) or individuals of different species (interspecific interactions).

The interactions may be of different types,eg:Competition,Amensalism,Exploitation,Neutralism, Ecological facilitation,commensalism,mutualism,symbiosis,competition,etc.Interactions that are direct between two groups,species or subspecies or genus are called direct interactions.Individuals may affect each other indirectly through intermediaries such as shared resources or common enemies.Such interactions are called indirect interactions.Interactions between plants and herbivores are considered “diffuse” if the ecological interactions between two species, or their evolutionary responses, differ depending on the presence of a third species.Two mutually exclusive ideas are found about how communiy structure is affected by indirect interactions.(a)Indirect interactions are no more important than direct interactions in determining community structure and dynamics.Chains of indirect interactions observed in nature rarely exceed 5-6 species.Thus perturbations (removal of a species, introduction of a new species, etc.) do not necessarily \"echo\" about communities and affect \"distant\" species in unpredictable ways.(b)Indirect interactions are likely to have greater effects on community structure, dynamics than direct effects.Biological communities contain hundreds to thousands of species that are interconnected via a vast number of direct and indirect links.So, Perturbations are likely to have unpredictable and far-reaching repercussions.Because of diffuse interactions and indirect effects, loss of combinations of non-keystone species may impact the community as much, or more, than loss of a single keystone species.