Experimental plant ecology as an approach in coastal population biology

The relations between a large number of scientific subdisciplines within the population biology of plants are presented. This overview in which the holistic and reductionistic approaches are discussed, emphasizes that conflicts between both attitudes are artificially raised. In fact, the one approach must support the other in order to trace the relations between the individual plants and their environments and to understand their performance at the population or community level. To illustrate this way of gaining insight into the richness of diversity in nature, two examples in experimental plant ecology are given.