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Diversity peaks at intermediate productivity in a laboratory microcosm

Nature volume 406, pages 508–512 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The species diversity of natural communities is often strongly related to their productivity. The pattern of this relationship seems to vary: diversity is known to increase monotonically with productivity, to decrease monotonically with productivity, and to be unimodally related to productivity, with maximum diversity occurring at intermediate levels of productivity1,2,3. The mechanism underlying these patterns remains obscure, although many possibilities have been suggested3,4,5,6. Here we outline a simple mechanism—involving selection in a heterogeneous environment—to explain these patterns, and test it using laboratory cultures of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens . We grew diverse cultures over a wide range of nutrient concentrations, and found a strongly unimodal relationship between diversity and productivity in heterogeneous, but not in homogeneous, environments. Our result provides experimental evidence that the unimodal relationship often observed in natural communities can be caused by selection for specialized types in a heterogeneous environment.

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Figure 1: Maintenance of two types in two ecological niches over a range of productivities.
Figure 2: As in Fig. 1 but with different parameter values.
Figure 3: Response of diversity to nutrient concentration in base population 1.
Figure 4

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. McCann and D. Schoen for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Canadian NSERC (G.B. and R.K.), the UK BBSRC and NERC (P.B.R. and A.B.) and the British Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Dr Penfield Avenue, Montreal, H3A 1B1, Quebec, Canada

    Rees Kassen & Graham Bell

  2. Redpath Museum, McGill University , 859 Sherbrooke Street West,, Montreal, H3A 2K6, Quebec, Canada

    Graham Bell

  3. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, UK

    Angus Buckling & Paul B. Rainey

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  1. Rees Kassen
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  2. Angus Buckling
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Correspondence to Rees Kassen.

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Kassen, R., Buckling, A., Bell, G. et al. Diversity peaks at intermediate productivity in a laboratory microcosm . Nature 406, 508–512 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35020060

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