The Relative Importance of Resource Limitation and Predator Limitation in Food Chains

Over 30 years ago, Hairston et al. (1960) published a short, insightful, and controversial paper (see also Slobodkin et al. (1967)) that attempted to explain how resource limitation and predator limitation varied among different trophic levels. Hairston et al. restricted their arguments to terrestrial systems with three trophic levels; however, Fretwell (1977) later extended Hairston et al.’s verbal model to systems with greater (or lesser) numbers of trophic levels. The basic argument presented by Hairston et al. and Fret-well was that one process (i.e., resource limitation or predator limitation) should dominate at a given trophic level and that the identity of this process should alternate among adjacent trophic levels: e.g., if a consumer trophic level was resource-limited, then the trophic levels comprising its resources and predators should both be predator-limited.

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