Is There Really Insufficient Support for Tilman’s R* Concept? A Comment on Miller et al.

Miller et al. (2005), in the American Naturalist (165:439–448), critically reviewed the applicability of Tilman’s resource‐ratio hypothesis. One of their conclusions was that only eight experimental papers support the R* concept, while five do not. We are familiar with some of the latter studies, and we question this conclusion. Our evaluation shows that 12 of the 13 articles investigated by Miller et al. support R* prediction, while one article does not fit the experimental conditions for a proper test. Moreover, the microbial and aquatic literature contains many more competition experiments consistent with the R* prediction. We therefore conclude that there is strong experimental support for the R* concept, at least from studies with bacteria, phytoplankton, and zooplankton.

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