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VII. ZOOCOENOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
When the zoocoenological characteristics are organised into their main
groups, the individual characteristics are placed within them as follows:
Synphysiological Qualitative Quantitative characteristics
characteristics | characteristics
Structure Relationship Quantitative Mass
relationships | relationships
1. Life form 3. Community | 4. Species identity |7. Abundance _| 10. Gravitas
relations of semaphoront
groups
2. Coetus value 5. Association 8. Dominance 11. Production
with biotope:
constancy
6. Fidelity 9. Spatial
distribution
§ SYNPHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
These express the essence of zoocoenoses, and include the factors that are
most important in identifying them. They are of prime importance over other
characteristics, even that of species spectra, because any of the further
characteristics can only be used if the synphysiological links of the studied
populations have been proven, that is, ifthe studied assemblage fits the criteria
of a zoocoenosis. There is no doubt that we can have synphysiological
information about a zoocoenosis, even if we know nothing about the species
identity of the constituent populations (in other words: a zoocoenosis exists
even if all its species are, as yet, undescribed); the situation is the same when
studying species. In the latter case, we, firstly, encounter a semaphoront, and
similarly, during the study of a zoocoenosis, we initially discover a semaphoront
group, and its taxonomic identification is a necessary task after the first
encounter, just as in faunistics or taxonomy. During the study of a zoocoenosis,
the first step is to identify the life forms.