Two simple scenarios for the emergence of new syntaxa. Blue circle: old syntaxon. Green and orange circles: newly emerging syntaxa. Solid blue arrows: species colonising and adapting to a new habitat or area. Dashed arrows: colonisation coupled with evolutionary changes, leading to new species or subspecies, which become character taxa of the new syntaxa.

 
 
  Part of: Willner W (2020) What is an alliance? Vegetation Classification and Survey 1: 139-144. https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS/2020/56372