What determines succession pattern?
Successional patterns emerge from interactions among species, dispersal, and abiotic environmental factors. Dispersal determines which seeds, spores, larvae, or adults reach a site, creating historical contingency and priority effects. Abiotic filters such as moisture, temperature, salinity, light, soil, and disturbance decide which arrivals can survive. Species then facilitate, tolerate, inhibit, consume, compete with, or form mutualisms with one another, altering establishment and replacement. Because these processes interact, identical disturbances need not produce identical endpoints. A ni
Ref: Ecology: Concepts and Applications, Molles, 9th Ed., Ch. 20
