Rotifers and Continuous Culture Techniques: Model Systems for Testing Mechanistic Concepts of Consumer-Resource Interactions

Abstract

The causal understanding of the mechanisms governing plankton communities has increased during the last decades, probably more than in any other field of ecology (e.g., Kerfoot 1980; Lampert 1985; Sommer et al. 1986; Sommer 1989a). It is the joint effort of descriptive field studies, field and laboratory experiments on the community and population level, and ecophysiological research on the organism level that has advanced this field of science. This progress would not have been possible, however, without the development of integrating concepts. A very successful concept has been predation. It provided an explanation for puzzles like cyclomorphosis (Havel 1987) and the vertical migration of zooplankton (Lampert 1989), as well as for whole community effects between trophic levels (McQueen et al. 1986).