Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Brief Communications Arising
  • Published:

Ecology

Mechanisms for consumer diversity

Abstract

Arising from: W. A. Nelson, E. McCauley & F. J. Wrona Nature 433, 413–417 (2005)10.1038/nature03212; Nelson et al. reply.

A variety of mechanisms can theoretically produce competitive coexistence in nature1, making it hard to identify a single explanation for the maintenance of diversity in any particular system. Based on laboratory experiments with a consumer–resource system of crustacean Daphnia eating algae, Nelson et al.2 suggest that maintenance of genetic diversity in the consumer populations they studied depends only on the dynamics of the population structure of the consumer. We suggest that the differences in Daphnia genetic diversity that they find for different experimental treatments could equally be explained by a simple, well known mechanism: the number of coexisting competitors cannot exceed the number of shared resources3,4,5. Here we confirm this possibility by using a simple mathematical model and suggest that more than one mechanism may account for the maintenance of genetic diversity observed by Nelson et al. in their system.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Effects of resource diversity on maintenance of consumer genetic diversity.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Chesson, P. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 31, 343–366 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Nelson, W. A., McCauley, E. & Wrona, F. J. Nature 433, 413–417 (2005).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Volterra, V. J. Cons. Int. Explor. Mer 3, 3–51 (1928).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Hardin, G. Science 131, 1292–1298 (1960).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. MacArthur, R. & Levins, R. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 51, 1207–1210 (1964).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. McCauley, E., Nisbet, R. M., Murdoch, W. W., de Roos, A. M. & Gurney, W. S. C. Nature 402, 653–656 (1999).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Tilman, D. Resource Competition and Community Structure (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1982).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Rothhaupt, K. O. Nature 333, 660–662 (1988).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Ciros-Perez, J., Carmona, M. J. & Serra, M. Limnol. Oceanogr. 46, 1511–1523 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Yoshida, T., Jones, L. E., Ellner, S. P., Fussmann, G. F. & Hairston, N. G. Jr Nature 424, 303–306 (2003).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Takehito Yoshida.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Yoshida, T., Jones, L., Ellner, S. et al. Mechanisms for consumer diversity. Nature 439, E1–E2 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04526

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04526

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing