Biodiversity and Interactions Within Pelagic Nutrient Cycling and Productivity

The high biodiversity in plankton communities led Hutchinson (1961) to pose his classical question: “How [is it] possible for a number of species to coexist in a relatively isotrophic or unstructured environment, all competing for the same sorts of materials?” Indeed, the almost ubiquitous existence of multispecies communities, especially on the microorganism level, is one of the few firm facts in ecology (Pimm, Chap. 16).