Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 62. (Budapest 1970)
Fekete, G. ; Szujkó-Lacza, J.: A survey of the plant life-form systems and the respective research approaches, II.
netically evolved specific reaction norms of its vegetative organs against environmental conditions. He emphasizes that the Wuchsform is the morphologic behaviour of the given plant, the Wuchsform of many plants being plastic. This plasticity is, according to the author's examples, a function of the habitat. GLLTCH studies changes in form appearing during the ontogenesis of the plant under examination. The variability of the reaction norms and the amplitude of variability is also considered important, and they are interpreted by the behaviour of the species within their geographic and ecological areas. He explains the Wuchsforms by two factors acting on their development : a phylogenetico-taxonomic and an ecologicogeographic one. Summary In this second part of our study it became necessary to discuss the life-form investigations by the different approaches, since the chronological sequence could have been upheld only at the loss of the logical one. The group interprétable as a transition or connexion between the several approaches had to be placed at the end of our exposition. Nor should it be forgotten that the various approaches were frequently parallel with one another, indeed, they are followed concurrently also today, with the respective authors hardly recognizing studies made by others. As can be seen from our survey, life-form investigations by the ecologico-coenological approach had a wide range even at their inception and they run the whole gamut also today. The difference among the various schools are multidirectional: some emphasize the ecological significance of the life-forms, others reject it — this difference is the cause of also the nomenclatorial divergences. But even those who do not contest the ecological importance of the life-forms interpret it in a stricter or wider sense; some consider only morphological, others also ecophysiological adaptations. A noteworthy new standpoint is the view based on the consideration of the aggressivity of the plants exerted within the coenosis (ZOZULIN, 1961); the quantitative estimation of the grades of this property may here be truly problematic. In our opinion, it is investigations, discussed among the approaches in the second part of our survey, which, taking us nearer to the exposition of the inner laws regulating the communities, mean the most for the ecologist and the coenologist. Such are, for instance, certain ontomorphogenetic results, or the study of groups founded on similar ontogenetic features, groups in which species shaping the community structure at nearly equal rates are brought together, or the investigation of the divergent ontomorphologies of the same species in diverse habitat conditions. References: 1. ADAMSON, R. S.: The classification of life-forms of plants (The Bot. Rev., 5, 1939, p. 546-561). — 2. ALLAN, H. H. : New Zealand trees and shrubs and how to identify them (1928, Wellington). — 3. COCKAYNE, L.: New Zealand plants and their story (1919, Wellington 2nd ed.). — 4. DANSEREAU, P. : Description and recording of vegetation upon a structural basis (Ecology, 32,1951, p. 172-244). — 5. DANSEREAU, P. & ARROS, J.: Essais d'application de la structurale en phytosociologie. I. Quelques exemples européens (Vegetatio Acta Geobot. 9, 1959, p. 48-99). — 6. GAMS, H.: Prinzipienfragen der Vegatationsforschung (Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforsch. Gesellscli., 63, 1918). — 7. GIMINGHAM, C. H.: The use of life form and growth form in the analysis of community structure, as illustrated by commparison of two dune communities (J. Ecol., 39, 1951, p. 396-406). — 8. GLUCH,W. : Wuchsformenstudien an zentraleuropäischen Fabaceen I. Die Stauden der Gattungen
