Abstract
The business of consuming resources is of paramount importance to the biology of all species. Whether consuming inorganic resources, e.g., photons or sulfur, or consuming organic resources, e.g., other organisms or their products, virtually every aspect of the biology of a species is affected by the quantity, quality, and availability of consumable resources. In the simplest systems—such as a uniformly distributed population under homogeneous environmental conditions consuming resources that renew at constant rates (as in a chemostat)—population growth is generally a straightforward outcome of consumption and the metabolic processes that govern the production of new individuals. What happens to populations, however, when systems are complex? That is, what happens when resources vary in time or space or when resources are consumed by other species in the community? We address this question by examining the ecological consequences of heterogeneity of consumable resources in multi-species systems.
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Naeem, S., Colwell, R.K. (1991). Ecological Consequences of Heterogeneity of Consumable Resources. In: Kolasa, J., Pickett, S.T.A. (eds) Ecological Heterogeneity. Ecological Studies, vol 86. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3062-5_12
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