Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis
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The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis is an ecological hypothesis which proposes that biodiversity is highest when disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent. With low disturbance, competitive exclusion by the dominant species arises. With high disturbance, only species tolerant of the stress can persist. The notion that disturbance can increase biodiversity opposes the older idea that diversity is highest in undisturbed ecosystems. It was first proposed by J. Philip Grime in 1973[1]. It was proposed again by Henry Horn in 1975[2] and by Joseph Connell in 1978[3]. Curiously, Connell's paper has usually been given priority over Grime's older paper[4]. This hypothesis caused concern among the marine science community because of the discrepancy with the 1976 Competition/Predation/Disturbance model proposed by Menge & Sutherland in American Naturalist. In Menge & Sutherlands model, low disturbance influences high predation and high disturbance creates low predation, causing competitive exclusion to take place. Menge & Sutherland formulated a new model, one that incorporated Connell's ideas in a two part graph published in the American Naturalist (1987). This model proposes that predation, competition, and disturbance are all responsible for shaping the diversity of a community under certain circumstances.
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- ^ Grime, J. P. 1973. Competitive exclusion in herbaceous vegetation. Nature 242: 344-347.
- ^ Horn, H. S. 1975. Markovian properties of forest succession. Pp. 196–211 in M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond (editors) Ecology and evolution of communities. Belknap Press,Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-674-22444-2
- ^ Connell, J. H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302–1310.
- ^ Wilkinson, David M. 1999. The disturbing history of intermediate disturbance. Oikos 84: 145-147.
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