Interaction of Productivity and Consumption

Abstract

Few areas of food web theory have attracted as much interest as the elucidation of the relative importance of resource limitation and predation in limiting or controlling the various trophic levels in food chains. Elton, in his Animal Ecology (1927), recognized the importance of food chains, the discrete trophic levels within them, and the pyramid of decreasing numbers of animals as the trophic level increased. Lindeman (1942) provided the interpretation of trophic structure in terms of energetics, describing the dependence of higher trophic levels on energy passed up the chain through consumption.