Small-Scale Patchiness, Models of
Abstract
Patchiness is perhaps the most salient characteristic of plankton populations in the ocean. The scale of this heterogeneity spans many orders of magnitude in its spatial extent, ranging from planetary down to microscale (Figure 1). It has been argued that patchiness plays a fundamental role in the functioning of marine ecosystems, insofar as the mean conditions may not reflect the environment to which organisms are adapted. For example, the fact that some abundant predators cannot thrive on the mean concentration of their prey in the ocean implies that they are somehow capable of exploiting small-scale patches of prey whose concentrations are much larger than the mean. Understanding the nature of this patchiness is thus one of the major challenges of oceanographic ecology.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA401306
Entities
People
- D. J. Mcgillicuddy Jr.
Organizations
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution