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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.
