TEMPORAL ORGANIZATION IN A MULTISPECIES MODEL

A multi-species model with a periodically changing environment and strict resource limitation is presented. The species differ in length and phase of their growth intervals. Although there is only one limiting resource, a very large number of species coexist. For almost any set of permanently coexisting species, invasion of additional species is possible, which either exclude others or not. The key to the high diversity in this model is temporal organization, which interferes with an approximate trade-off condition between the length of the growth interval and the growth rate for coexisting species. In some cases temporal organized species cooperate indirectly, and support each other. © 1992.