Abstract
The present study provides new insight into the key aspects of the early formative period of the ecosystem concept in aquatic ecology. Raymond Lindeman’s trophodynamics is known to be a starting point for the development of the modern concept of ecosystem. The trophodynamic approach in ecology was proposed by Lindeman in his widely cited paper of 1942. Lindeman’s views are analyzed in comparison with the contemporary production studies in aquatic ecology. It is shown that a similar theoretical system has been proposed in the USSR at the end of the 1930s by Georgiy G. Vinberg. He introduced the concept of biotic balance based on the wide appraisal of the dark and light bottles method. The study shows that both Lindeman’s trophodynamics and Vinberg’s concept of biotic balance relied on an energy-based approach in considering the wholeness of a water body. The two scientists, however, differed in several important aspects concerning the interpretation of the role of living organisms. The holistic interpretation of ecosystem by Lindeman and Vinberg can be seen as part of the dilemma between physicalism and organicism. At the same time, the main emphasis in the concepts of both Vinberg and Lindemann was on the primary production component, a feature that was common to the first holistic systems in production hydrobiology (e.g., E. Naumann’s regional limnology). It is clear that modern problems of aquatic ecology should be addressed from the perspective of the organismocentric understanding of the ecosystem, but undoubtedly at the new level of development of this view.
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Notes
R. Lindeman is often credited with the statement (see, for instance, the reference in Karpowicz et al. 2020) that every next trophic level accounts only for 10% of energy of the previous level (i.e., the production ratio between adjacent trophic levels is 0.1). In the popular-science sources, this rule is often called “10% law” or “Lindeman’s law.” However, there is no reason to attribute this statement to him. It will be shown in the following text that Lindeman only postulated a progressive decrease in energy (because of energy dissipation) in going from one trophic level to the next, higher level.
The Eltonian pyramid is a graphic representation of the numbers of individuals, biomass or energy across the trophic levels in an ecosystem. Consequently, there are Eltonian pyramids of numbers, biomass and energy.
This is not an official translation of the journal name.
There are two variants of English spelling of the researcher’s surname (Vinberg and Winberg).
This is now the Ivan D. Papanin Institute for Biology of Inland Waters of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the Borok settlement of the Yaroslavl Region).
The Institute is now located in Kaliningrad and is called the Kaliningrad State Technical University.
This “parallelism” presents an opportunity for historians of science to take one particular country as a case study and explore the development of general principles in a certain scientific approach or subdiscipline in this country, without the risk of being accused of parochialism.
This is Vinberg’s own reference to one of the papers of Lev S. Selivanov (1908–1945), a little-known Soviet biogeochemist, who in the 1930s explored the application of V. Vernadsky’s ideas in aquatic ecology. Selivanov considered the water body as a system of equilibria that is disturbed by living organisms. The fate of Selivanov was quite tragic. In 1941, during the Great Patriotic War he joined the army as a volunteer and was believed to be missing in action. Recent archival studies have shown that he was imprisoned by the Nazi and participated in a revolt in the concentration camp, during which he was killed (http://catalog.lib.tpu.ru/files/names/document/RU/TPU/pers/8946).
It should be remembered that A. Tansley was against the organismocentric interpretation of superorganismal levels and introduced the term “ecosystem” as part of criticism of F. Clements’ writings (Valk 2014). Tansley understood the ecosystem as a physical object and a certain unit in nature, in which living and non-living components are equally represented and play the same role.
This is not an official translation of the journal name.
Since its founding in 1933 to the present day, the journal “Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR” accepts articles, whose authors are academicians or corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly the USSR Academy of Sciences). The articles of other authors are accepted only on condition that they have been presented (i.e., recommended for publication) by an academician of the respective discipline.
It is known that G.E. Hutchinson was closely acquainted with Georgiy V. Vernadsky, a son of V.I. Vernadsky, when the latter was teaching in Yale University as a professor (Golley 1993). Georgiy introduced Hutchinson to his father’s works and materials. Lindeman learned about Vernadsky’s ideas from Hutchinson and was greatly influenced by them while editing his manuscript on trophodynamics. Although Lindeman mentioned Vernadsky in his 1942 paper, it remains unclear, however, as to how exactly he employed Vernadsky’s ideas in developing his own concept.
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Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to staff of the Scientific Library of the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (especially to a head of the Library Dr. Evgeniya S. Labina and to librarians Svetlana M. Pul’kkinen, Anna A. Khalina, Elena S. Labina, and to researcher Yulia A. Dunaeva) for perennial priceless help in my work. I am indebted to translator Dr. Anatoliy A. Petrov (Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences) for his great assistance.
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Rizhinashvili, A.L. Rethinking some roots of ecosystem approach in aquatic ecology: between the food cycle and lake metabolism. Theory Biosci. 143, 131–151 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-024-00416-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-024-00416-5