Figure 1. Conceptual diagrams of “ecotone in traditional view” (a) and “seasonal ecotone and associated seasonal reassembly” (b,c) proposed in this study. Colours of arrows in the back indicate environment, black and white as two extremes (cf. terrestrial and aquatic, lotic and lentic). In the ecotone in traditional view, there is environmental gradient from one extreme to another at all times, while seasonal ecotone is represented more as habitats which experience two different environments seasonally at different proportions of time. Communities in the seasonal ecotone would exhibit seasonal re-assembly as the environment change, by movements between habitats (b) or by seasonal occupations by different organisms (c).