Of Mice and Mast Ecological connections in eastern deciduous forests

popular characterization of ecological systems is that everything is connected to everything else. Although in some metaphysical sense it may be true that influences experienced by a particular species are transmitted to all other species in the ecosystem, such pervasive connections have not been demonstrated scientifically. Instead, the focus of community ecology has been on pairwise interactions between species. The paradigm has been that the determinants of community structure can be elucidated by studies of direct effects of populations on one or a few other populations (Kareiva 1994). To identify the role of predation or competition in structuring ecological communities, typically a predator or competitor is removed, and the responses of prey or other competitors are monitored (Connell 1983, Menge and Sutherland 1976, Schoener 1983, Sih et al. 1985). These studies reveal the importance of direct effects in ecological communities. However, such experiments often produce unexpected results, In oak forests, both

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