Plant Life-Forms and Environmental Filtering During the Primary Succession on Loose Volcanic Substrata (Kamchatka, Russia)
The features of forest vegetation dynamics and the main factors and mechanisms of environmental filtering were studied on loose deposits of the Tolbachinskii Dol volcanic plateau (Kamchatka) by means of plant life-forms analysis. It was found that in the earlier stages of plant succession polycarpic herbs, acrocarpous mosses and fruticulose lichens dominated. 35-aged forest communities differed from the old-growth ones by the proportions of plant life-forms and total coverage. The environmental filtering manifested by the most successful development of plants having special morphologic adaptations of below-ground systems to unstable substrata.