The Community Concept and the Phytoplankton

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Abstract
The community concept of terrestrial ecology is examined with particular reference to its application to phytoplankton distribution. It is probably more appropriate to regard phytoplankton distribution as entirely probabilistic, comparable to a local situation in a tropical rain forest. The oceans of the world would then be regarded collectively as a single essentially uniform environment inhabitated by a single diverse population. The probability of encountering any given species in any ocean might then be very low but would be nowhere zero. The thesis is examined mathematically with respect to data from the diatom literature and its further implications are briefly discussed.