CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study has found that each step of the
marine food chain is clearly controlled by the trophic level
below it – and the driving factor influencing that relationship
is not the abundance of prey, but how that prey is distributed.
The importance of the spatial pattern of resources – sometimes
called “patchiness” – is gaining new appreciation from
ecologists, who are finding the overall abundance of food less
important than its density and ease of access to it. Results of
the study are being published this week in the Royal Society
journal Biology Letters. Kelly Benoit-Bird, an Oregon State
University oceanographer and lead author on the study, said
patchiness is not a new concept, but one that has gained
acceptance as sophisticated technologies have evolved to track
relationships among marine species. “The spatial patterns of the
resource ultimately determine how the ecosystem functions,” said
Benoit-Bird, who received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in
2010. “In the past, ecologists pr