新GRE閱讀的練習選擇題

Many theories have been formulated to explain the role of grazers such as zooplankton in controlling the amount of planktonic algae in lakes. The first theories of such grazer control were merely based on observations of negative correlations between algal and zooplankton numbers. A low number of algal cells in the presence of a high number of grazers suggested, but did not prove, that the grazers had removed most of the algae. The converse observation, of the absence of grazers in areas of high phytoplankton concentration, led Hardy to propose his principle of animal exclusion, which hypothesized that phytoplankton produced a repellent that excluded grazers from regions of high phytoplankton concentration. This was the first suggestion of algal defenses against grazing.

Perhaps the fact that many of these first studies considered only algae of a size that could be collected in a net , a practice that overlooked the smaller phytoplankton that we now know grazers are most likely to feed on, led to a de-emphasis of the role of grazers in subsequent research. Increasingly, as in the individual studies of Lund, Round, and Reynolds, researchers began to stress the importance of environmental factors such as temperature, light, and water movements in controlling algal numbers. These environmental factors were amenable to field monitoring and to simulation in the laboratory. Grazing was believed to have some effect on algal numbers, especially after phytoplankton growth rates declined at the end of bloom periods, but grazing was considered a minor component of models that predicted algal population dynamics.