Ecological Strategies in a Deep Water Red Algal Community

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Abstract
The ecological strategies of algal species in a predominantly red algal community at 15 m depth on a high energy coast of southern Australia are described. The 3 determining conditions for this community are competition, stress and disturbance, and each invokes a distinctive strategy, i.e., dominance, adaptation to low light and the ephemeral strategy, respectively. A triangular ordination is used to model the relative importance of these strategies for common species during a successional sequence and in the mature community. During the succession there is a shift from ephemeral species to dominant species, while species adapted to low light appear only in the late succession. Some species have composite strategies that are less easily modeled. They are species with heteromorphic life histories and those which depend on vegetative reproduction.