Ecotones

Ecotones are dynamic boundaries and transitional areas between two very distinct ecological habitats containing different communities and physicochemical features. They are less extensive than the communities they separate and are associated with a gradient either in the physical environment or stress exerted on them, like differences in herbivore grazing on either side. They often have defining characteristics unique from the environs separating them, creating an “edge effect”, a phenomenon where biodiversity is increased in the transition zone.

The abrupt transition between wet prairie and pond cypress tree line

The transition between wet prairie (left) to pine flatwoods (right)

You can see an extremely distinct ecotone between the pine flatwoods and pond cypress from the boardwalk at Corkscrew called a wet prairie. These types of wet grasslands result from a hydrological gradient, among other factors, between permanently dry forests and permanently inundated wetlands. Although pond cypress can dry down, the soils stay mostly saturated. Wet prairies are herbaceous communities dominated by graminoids (grass-like plants) and forbs (herbaceous flowering plants that are not grass like), while the two ecosystems on either side are both forested.

-Sam