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50 | IL. Biocoenosis and zoocoenosis
We shall deal with the concept of biotope in the next section. Here, we
only note that it is the biotope that is primarily changed due to human activity,
and remains in a continuously disturbed state; consequently, the biocoenosis
necessarily changes.
From statements relating to the structure of the biocoenosis, it follows
that human activity will block succession. When interfering with a biotope,
an association is destroyed that was in a phase that was moving towards a
climax. On the steppe (grassland) of cultural origin thus created, a succession
would restart if the agricultural activities did not repeatedly block the process.
Human activity, with its cultivation of crop plants, forces foreign producents
into the biotope, creating a “plant association”; however, this new association
conceals a further association of ruderal and segetal plant species, and these
would start the succession, in the absence of more human intervention
(Ubrizsy, 1954).
In considering the structural elements outlined above, or the older, three¬
level classification, there is no doubt that the agrobiocoenoses contain all
constituents. The producents are put there by humans, the consuments arrive
by themselves (necessitating the birth of plant protection), and reducents
must also be present, otherwise soil fertility would drastically be reduced;
without all these elements, crop cultivation, that is already demanding, would
be impossible. Human influence is immeasurable: the plant cover is
transformed, its fauna changed and, in the soil, the fauna and reducent
organisms are exposed to incessant disturbance. Nonetheless, the three life
elements are present. The fact that in the soil, which, in our opinion, is the
most important component in the life of the biocoenosis, only the species
spectrum, andabundance relationships change, as confirmed by only a relative
change reported in the results of coenological studies in agricultural soils
(Franz, 1950; Scharffenberg, 1951; Jahn, 1951). Consequently, we cannot
accept why would one consider a biological association living on a site under
agricultural cultivation as structurally, i.e. essentially, different from
biocoenoses present at relatively less disturbed (because we cannot consider
them undisturbed) habitats.
This type of human activity is not as unnatural as many believe. It is certain
that humans cause changes to the natural world that, at least to a degree, did
not exist before the arrival of humans (Tschegolev, 1951); it cannot be doubted
that, even under undisturbed natural conditions, there are transformative
effects on nature that are the equivalent to human interventions. Essentially,
an anthill does not differ from a human settlement: only things that are
tolerated by the ant population remain in the vicinity and, within the hill,
only what is useful or indifferent for ant activity is accepted. Fungi-farming
ants or scolitid beetles are, essentially, “plant growers”, and the dependence
of the farmed fungi on these animals is very like the dependence of
domesticated plants on humans as a result of plant breeding. The turning
over of soil by a family of wild boar is the same as ploughing, and grazing