Anyway, one important question that forest ecologists and managers would like to know is what could be done to make less mature forests suitable to spotted owls. If we knew the assembly rules, we'd have a better idea of the answer. Many ecologists have been critical of the way that assembly rules have been used, and the nature of the evidence supporting the idea that assembly rules can even be identified. Species invade and go extinct based on their own intrinsic characteristics, according to this view, rather than on the basis of which other species are in the community. At the very least, these ecologists argue, we need to be very careful that we don't just assume that patterns that appear superficially to be highly ordered aren't just the result of random events.
Some communities do appear to be essentially random assemblages.
Juvenile forms of these fish live elsewhere, and settle on the reefs as adults. For the most part, though, it is clear that combinations of species are not random. Communities may not always be a highly integrated, highly coevolved webs of species, but they aren't random assemblages either. The view of succession as a progression to a stable climax may fit many communities, but it is not always so. Succession in ephemeral communities Many ecological communities are very ephemeral.