Seite 126 [126]
124 IVIL Zoocoenological characteristics
that commands special attention during the investigations of a zoocoenosis.
If we neglected this, we would follow a path that artificially isolated the
studied zoocoenosis. A zoocoenosis is connected to its environment through
multiple links, and one of the most important is through indirect kinship
that, through shared populations, connects “our” zoocoenosis to others.
There is no doubt that these links establish a certain reciprocity between the
communities that have kinship, and whose effects should always be considered
because they can be more important than the reliance on the same energy
source. Therefore, one could question whether it would be better to categorise
the zoocoenoses by these kinships, rather than based on energy sources.
This, however, would hardly be acceptable, because the communities in
kinship may be distant from each other and, apart from one or two populations
that form the kinship, they have no other links. Most of the constituent
populations have nothing to do with each other. Such a categorisation would
lead us to the point we reached with the connex schemes, and we end up in
amaze of complicated arrows, indicating the ever more tentative and accidental
connections that link a community through kin that are also kin with another
community, etc. Ultimately, these mapped connections would lead to
communities so far removed in space and impac that the term “coenosis”
becomes meaningless. The bilateral, indirect coenological link does not create
a coenosis; it shows the direction whereby one zoocoenosis can impact
another one. Such an impact can, occasionally, be substantial, and it can be
necessary to assess its effects to explain the processes and changes in abundance
within the coenosis, but the coenosis itself remains, despite the outside impact.
A coenosis that is formed around a common energy source, that can be
described and identified by its stable elements, and that is not fragmented
by its kinships into one or more other coenoses, only goes to prove the
importance of environmental factors; a coenosis can only be properly studied
through taking account of its environment. Zoocoenology must view
zoocoenoses through populations and not species, because the latter approach
leads to an undecipherable maze, making the recognition of the coenotic
categories impossible.
§ QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS
4. The species identity of semaphoront groups
In theory, there is no obstacle that prevents forming an overall impression
about the coenotic relationships of a semaphoront group before identifying
its species. The latter, however, is still necessary, and not only because science
strives for full knowledge, horizontally as well as vertically. It is also a cognitive
necessity to establish this first qualitative characteristic. The knowledge of
the species is not merely a name - a useful shorthand in further work but