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.