Toward the understanding of complex population dynamics: planktonic community as a model system

Abstract

AbstractEcologists have long been interested in understanding population dynamics in nature. Although theoretical ecologists have shown that mathematical models can represent various dynamic behaviors, and empirical ecologists have confirmed that some types of dynamics actually exist in nature, we do not yet completely understand how population dynamics are driven. The list of possible mechanisms driving population dynamics is still growing. Here I review studies of population dynamics carried out both in the field and in the laboratory by my colleagues and myself. I first describe some population dynamics of planktonic organisms living in freshwater lakes, then introduce some mechanisms driving population dynamics, for which theoretical and empirical evidence has only recently begun to accumulate. I also discuss how and why laboratory microcosms are a useful tool in the study of population dynamics. Future challenges to the advance of our understandings of complex population dynamics in nature lie where three different approaches intersect: time‐series data description, mathematical modeling, and laboratory and field experiments.