[LTER-mcm-pi] 5 min gem for the week

[Priscu, John]

So where do the MCM soils, streams and lakes fit into this paradigm?

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D0F06A.FFF2B480]

From: John Barrett [mailto:jebarre at vt.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 10:22 AM
To: Priscu, John
Cc: mcm-pi at lists.lternet.edu
Subject: Re: [LTER-mcm-pi] 5 min gem for the week

Wow, that's uncanny John. I was just using the paradox of the plankton in discussion with my grad students.

My guess would be viruses to explain diversity in lakes. They are otherwise too stable - unless we can invoke flood years as a physical disruption that offsets competative exclusion. Are there data in the cool years to show decreases in diversity? That would be a test of whether floods acted to upset equilibrium in species composition.



On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Priscu, John <jpriscu at montana.edu<mailto:jpriscu at montana.edu>> wrote:
Sorry that I missed the call yesterday—didn’t get home from Europe until midnight and was not well organized—in other words, I forgot about the call.

Here would be my gem for the week: So, where does the MCM fit into Terborgh’s scheme? We have few predators (I think we do—at least for the lakes), yet biodiversity is relatively high. What replaces predators in our system—Viruses? physical disruption? Maybe physical disruption occurs faster than competitive exclusion, maintaining high diversity? This kind of contemporaneous disequilibrium has been proposed by Richerson et al. 1970 (attached) [Richerson was the chair of my grad committee].

JP

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--
J. E. Barrett, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
2125 Derring Hall
Department of Biological Sciences
Virginia Tech
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