Correction

Abstract

Previous article FreeCorrectionLauri OksanenLauri OksanenDepartment of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT–The Arctic University of Norway, Campus Alta, 9510 Alta, Norway; and Department of Biology, Section of Ecology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland Search for more articles by this author Original articleExploitation Ecosystems in Gradients of Primary ProductivityFull TextPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn the 1981 article by Oksanen et al. titled “Exploitation Ecosystems in Gradients of Primary Productivity” (American Naturalist 118:240–261), figure 2 has a potentially confusing technical flaw that should have been fixed decades ago. Figure 2 was intended to consist of three panels, laid side by side, as in the corrected figure 2. However, doing the artwork by hand was so challenging that I had to draw each panel on a separate A4 sheet. In response, the technical editors decided to publish the panels as if they were separate figures, which did improve the visual clarity of figure 2. Unfortunately, however, the legend explaining the entire figure 2 now landed under figure 2a. Moreover, the word “systems” was edited to the singular, which made it hard for the reader to guess that the first sentence refers to the entire figure 2. Here, figure 2 is laid out as initially intended.Figure 2. Carnivore (C), herbivore (H), and plant (P) systems at different points of the productivity (G) axis. Unstable equilibrium is a solid dot; stable equilibrium is a dot with a star. a, An unproductive system where the plant isocline (the rightward-sloping surface) remains well below the carnivore isocline. The herbivore isocline (the surface bending backward from the plane of the page) crosses the plant isocline on the right side of its hump and in the C=0 plane, creating a stable herbivore-plant equilibrium. b, A system where the potential primary productivity has twice the value it had in figure 2a. The herbivore-plant equilibrium is unstable, so that sustained cyclic changes in plant and herbivore density are to be expected. c, Here the potential productivity is 1.25 times that of the system in figure 2b. A locally stable carnivore-herbivore-plant equilibrium has been established.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointMoreover, the article contains two confusing typos on page 255, in the first line of the last paragraph. The numbers of the figures referred to are incorrect. The line ought to be as follows: “A comparison between figure 3 and figure 5 suggests further observations.” Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The American Naturalist Volume 195, Number 6June 2020 Published for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/708807 Views: 180 HistorySubmitted February 11, 2020Published online April 06, 2020 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.Related articlesExploitation Ecosystems in Gradients of Primary Productivity15 Oct 2015The American Naturalist