Competition and Coexistence in Plankton Communities

摘要: Planktonic protozoa (ciliates of the genus Paramecium) were first test organisms by which competitive exclusion principle could be demonstrated (Gause 1934). Plankton (now phytoplankton) again served as model when Hutchinson (1961) made ecological community aware apparent contradiction between and number coexisting species (“the paradox plankton”; theoretical foundations are explained in Chap. 2, this Vol.). This article turned out to extremely fruitful generating discussion ecology developing models solve plankton became a major challenge. The most influential these attempts was Tilman’s (1977) theory resource competition, used phytoplankton (the freshwater diatoms Asterionella formosa Cyclotella meneghiniana) for its experimental test. During following decades, still played an important role analysis competition coexistence. Within there strong bias towards phytoplankton, bacterioplankton ranking second zooplankton third. popularity had several reasons, some them more technical, one reason is fundamental.