coenosis

English

Noun

coenosis (plural coenoses)

1. A group of organisms within a particular habitat or ecosystem, along with their interactions within that environment; the subset of an ecosystem that focuses solely on living (biotic) participants.
   • 1963, United States. Dept. of Commerce. Office of Technical Services, OTS. - Issues 63-11027, page 4:

     The two processes cannot be separated; modification of species causes a change in phytocoenic and ecologic relations between the plants of a coenosis, and therefore create a new coenosis altogether; whereas modification of the coenosis entails in its turn a further evolution of species within the coenosis (i.e., phylocoenogenesis).

   • 1987, Biology Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:

     For various coenoses, the threshold concentrations of methanol differ sharply; it was less than 1% for the Karelian lake, approximately 4% for the stream mouth, and around 6% for the aeration coenosis.

   • 2013, S. Chandra, M. Srivastava, Pteridology in the New Millennium:

     With time sparsing of sporophytes through the intraspecific and interspecific (with other plants in the coenosis) competition takes place in the loci, and the sporophytes get established in the herbal cover of the coenosis.

Derived terms

• ichnocoenosis
• malacocoenosis
• phytocoenosis
• thanatocoenosis