ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2014
Many ways to stay in the game: individual variability maintains high biodiversity in planktonic microorganisms.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- An adaptive dynamics framework for microbial ecology and evolution.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Paradox of the Sub-Plankton: Plausible Mechanisms and Open Problems Underlying Strain-Level Diversity in Microbial Communities.Environmental microbiology · 2025Review
- Diversity strengthens competing teams.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- One Cell at a Time: Advances in Single-Cell Methods and Instrumentation for Discovery in Aquatic Microbiology.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Can a More Variable Species Win Interspecific Competition?Acta biotheoretica · 2021Article
- Growth strategies of a model picoplankter depend on social milieu andProceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Biodiversity of marine microbes is safeguarded by phenotypic heterogeneity in ecological traits.PloS one · 2021Article
- Functional redundancy in natural pico-phytoplankton communities depends on temperature and biogeography.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Effects of auxin derivatives on phenotypic plasticity and stress tolerance in five species of the green algaPeerJ · 2020Article
- Rapid evolution of prey maintains predator diversity.PloS one · 2019Article
- Indole-3-acetic-acid-induced phenotypic plasticity in Desmodesmus algae.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The Effect of Strain Level Diversity on Robust Inference of Virus-Induced Mortality of Phytoplankton.Frontiers in microbiology · 2018Article
- The role of intraspecific variation in the ecological and evolutionary success of diatoms in changing environments.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Intraspecific variability in Phaeocystis antarctica's response to iron and light stress.PloS one · 2017Article
- Article
- Grazer-induced morphological defense in Scenedesmus obliquus is affected by competition against Microcystis aeruginosa.Scientific reports · 2015Article
- Metatranscriptome analyses indicate resource partitioning between diatoms in the field.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- Persistent Intra-Specific Variation in Genetic and Behavioral Traits in the Raphidophyte, Heterosigma akashiwo.Frontiers in microbiology · 2015Article
- Phytoplankton and particle size spectra indicate intense mixotrophic dinoflagellates grazing from summer to winter.Journal of plankton researchArticle
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In apparent contradiction to competition theory, the number of known, coexisting plankton species far exceeds their explicable biodiversity-a discrepancy termed the Paradox of the Plankton. We introduce a new game-theoretic model for competing microorganisms in which one player consists of all organisms of one species. The stable points for the population dynamics in our model, known as strategic behaviour distributions (SBDs), are probability distributions of behaviours across all organisms which imply a stable population of the species as a whole. We find that intra-specific variability is the key characteristic that ultimately allows coexistence because the outcomes of competitions between individuals with variable competitive abilities are unpredictable. Our simulations based on the theoretical model show that up to 100 species can coexist for at least 10,000 generations, and that even small population sizes or species with inferior competitive ability can survive when there is intra-specific variability. In nature, this variability can be observed as niche differentiation, variability in environmental and ecological factors, and variability of individual behaviours or physiology. Therefore, previous specific explanations of the paradox are consistent with and provide specific examples of our suggestion that individual variability is the mechanism which solves the paradox.
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