The Paradox of the Plankton
1961/05/01 by G. E. Hutchinson, G. Evelyn Hutchinson · 3,110 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics #Biology #Demography #Diversification (marketing strategy) #Ecology #Geography #Marine Biology and Ecology Research #Population #Sociology #Species Distribution and Climate Change
paper · doi:10.1086/282171
published in The American Naturalist 95(882), 137-145 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 1961/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Cited by
- A General Hypothesis of Species Diversity
- Episodic Hypoxia in Chesapeake Bay: Interacting Effects of Recruitment, Behavior, and Physical Disturbance
- Seasonal variation in the diversity and species richness of phytoplankton in a tropical eutrophic reservoir
- Long-term adjustment of phytoplankton structure to environmental traits at timescales during lifetime development and over generations
- Population Structure Plays a Key Role in Community Stability
- Measuring competition coefficients in an ant community: Implications for intraspecific adaptation load
- A salinity gradient mediates plant diversity–function–stability relationships across a coastal marsh landscape
- Elements of a theory for the mechanisms controlling abundance, diversity, and biogeochemical role of lytic bacterial viruses in aquatic systems
- Community dynamics and physiology of Symbiodinium spp. before, during, and after a coral bleaching event
- Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveals genetic structure in the open ocean
- The Bretskyan hierarchy, multiscale allopatry, and geobiomes—on the nature of evolutionary things
- EVOLUTION AND MEASUREMENT OF SPECIES DIVERSITY
- Vertical environmental gradient drives prokaryotic microbial community assembly and species coexistence in a stratified acid mine drainage lake
- Ecology of Plant and Free-Living Nematodes in Natural and Agricultural Soil
- Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity
- Microbial functional diversity and redundancy: moving forward
- Frequency‐dependent community dynamics driven by sexual interactions
- Divide and conquer: Spatial and temporal resource partitioning structures benthic cyanobacterial mats
- Paradox of the Sub‐Plankton: Plausible Mechanisms and Open Problems Underlying Strain‐Level Diversity in Microbial Communities
- Higher genetic variance of prey defence promotes fluctuation-dependent species coexistence
- Persistence and extinction for stochastic ecological models with internal and external variables
- Communities as cliques
- Mechanisms of local coexistence in juvenile congeneric salmonids in small tributaries with different thermal regimes
- Generalized Single Index Models and Jensen Effects on Reproduction and Survival
- How heterogeneous thymic output and homeostatic proliferation shape naive T cell receptor clone abundance distributions
- Seasonality drives temporal niche partitioning of pelagic prokaryotes
- Midwater fishes and shrimps as competitors and resource partitioning in low latitude oligotrophic ecosystems
- Comparison of the global dynamics for two chemostat-like models: random temporal variation versus spatial heterogeneity
- Disentangling the importance of ecological niches from stochastic processes across scales
- Consequences of fluctuating group size for the evolution of cooperation
- Motile curved bacteria are Pareto-optimal
- Density Dependence Promotes Species Coexistence and Provides a Unifying Explanation for Distinct Productivity–Diversity Relationships
- The immeasurable value of plankton to humanity
- Are plant traits drivers of endophytic communities in seasonally flooded tropical forests?
- Intraspecific genetic diversity and coexistence in phytoplankton populations
- Planktonic functional diversity changes in synchrony with lake ecosystem state
- Skyglow increases cyanobacteria abundance and organic matter cycling in lakes
- Boom-bust population dynamics can increase diversity in evolving competitive communities
- The relative importance of relative nonlinearity and the storage effect in the lottery model
- Major open problems in chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics
- The Waterwheel in the Waterfall
- Complex pattern formation driven by the interaction of stable fronts in a competition-diffusion system
- Robust permanence for ecological equations with internal and external feedbacks
- Minireviews: A Sea of Change: Biogeochemical Variability in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre
- Local Quadratic Estimation of the Curvature in a Functional Single Index Model
- Systems, environments, and soliton rate equations (II): Toward realistic modeling
- The spatial scales of species coexistence
- Complementarity in spatial subsidies of carbon associated with resource partitioning along multiple niche axes
- Role of biological disturbance in maintaining diversity in the deep sea
- The habitat of mesopelagic scyphomedusae in Monterey Bay, California
- Fluctuating growth rates link turnover and unevenness in species-rich communities
- Mare Incognitum: A Glimpse into Future Plankton Diversity and Ecology Research
- Global pattern of phytoplankton diversity driven by temperature and environmental variability
- From Balance of Nature to Hierarchical Patch Dynamics: A Paradigm Shift in Ecology
- Trait-Based Community Ecology of Phytoplankton
- Population and community responses of phytoplankton to fluctuating light
- Mechanisms of Physical-Biological-Biogeochemical Interaction at the Oceanic Mesoscale
- Neutral competition boosts chaos in food webs
- The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Northwest Atlantic through Eastern Tropical Pacific
- Collaboration among sponge species increases sponge diversity and abundance in a seagrass meadow
- An evaluation of stabilizing selection as a mechanism for stasis
- Virioplankton: Viruses in Aquatic Ecosystems
- Multi‐infections, competitive interactions, and pathogen coexistence
- Optimal nitrogen-to-phosphorus stoichiometry of phytoplankton
- Adaptive divergence in pigment composition promotes phytoplankton biodiversity
- The effect of species diversity on lipid production by micro-algal communities
- Phytoplankton in theTaraOcean
- Niche partitioning and the role of intraspecific niche variation in structuring a guild of generalist anurans
- Allelochemics: Chemical Interactions between Species
- On chaos in Lotka–Volterra systems: an analytical approach
- Latitudinal Gradients in Species Diversity: The Search for the Primary Cause
- Age-abundance relationships for neutral communities
- Positive-feedback Switches in Plant Communities
- Verification and reformulation of the competitive exclusion principle
- Quantitative steps in symbiogenesis and the evolution of homeostasis
- Diversity in biology: definitions, quantification and models
- Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes
- Sheldon spectrum and the plankton paradox: two sides of the same coin—a trait-based plankton size-spectrum model
- Temporal variation, dormancy, and coexistence: A field test of the storage effect
- Predation differentially structures immature mosquito populations in stormwater ponds
- Blue whale [wikipedia]
- G. Evelyn Hutchinson [wikipedia]
- Phytoplankton [wikipedia]
- Disentangling the importance of ecological niches from stochastic processes across scales. [europepmc]
- Phylogenetic relatedness predicts priority effects in nectar yeast communities. [europepmc]
- The neutral-niche debate: a philosophical perspective. [europepmc]
- Trait-based representation of biological nitrification: model development, testing, and predicted community composition. [europepmc]
- Environmental variability counteracts priority effects to facilitate species coexistence: evidence from nectar microbes. [europepmc]
- Tradeoffs in bacteriophage life histories. [europepmc]
- A network-based approach to disturbance transmission through microbial interactions. [europepmc]
- Functional traits reveal the expansion and packing of ecological niche space underlying an elevational diversity gradient in passerine birds. [europepmc]
- Presence of a loner strain maintains cooperation and diversity in well-mixed bacterial communities. [europepmc]
- Recurring patterns in bacterioplankton dynamics during coastal spring algae blooms. [europepmc]
- Disturbance and mosquito diversity in the lowland tropical rainforest of central Panama. [europepmc]
- High resolution time series reveals cohesive but short-lived communities in coastal plankton. [europepmc]
- Isolation, Characterization, and Antibacterial Activity of Hard-to-Culture Actinobacteria from Cave Moonmilk Deposits. [europepmc]
- A strong link between marine microbial community composition and function challenges the idea of functional redundancy. [europepmc]
- Parallel phylogeography of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. [europepmc]
- Competition and resource breadth shape niche variation and overlap in multiple trophic dimensions. [europepmc]
- Repeated species radiations in the recent evolution of the key marine phytoplankton lineage Gephyrocapsa. [europepmc]
- Diversity, Ecology, and Prevalence of Antimicrobials in Nature. [europepmc]
- Dynamic metabolic adaptation can promote species coexistence in competitive microbial communities. [europepmc]
- The Complicated and Confusing Ecology of Microcystis Blooms. [europepmc]
- Nutrient levels and trade-offs control diversity in a serial dilution ecosystem. [europepmc]
- Single strain control of microbial consortia. [europepmc]
- Important ecophysiological roles of non-dominant Actinobacteria in plant residue decomposition, especially in less fertile soils. [europepmc]
- Global patterns and rates of habitat transitions across the eukaryotic tree of life. [europepmc]
- From kill the winner to eliminate the winner in open phage-bacteria systems. [europepmc]