However, in plankton communities, the possibility of dispersion of 

 species into different ecological niches is in principle less than in 

 benthic communities. Divergence as to type of substrate, of course, is 

 impossible, as to synusia--quite difficult; the basis of specialization 

 becomes differentiation as to the nature of food, time and conditions of 

 feeding and seasons of development. Therefore, in plankton communities, 

 the significance of weak interactions and the factors minimizing the 

 interrelationships are probably significantly less important than in 

 benthic communities. 



In recent times, since the development of the modern concept of the 

 biological niche--the "Hutchinson niche" (Hutchinson, 1957, 1959), the 

 concept of stability of ecosystems and the relation of stability to 

 processes of succession (MacArthur, 1955; Margalef, 1963a, b, 1968), the 

 concept of packing density of niches (MacArthur, 1960, 1965) and the 

 creation of the "stability-time" hypothesis (Sanders, 1968. 1969; 

 Slobodkin, Sanders, 1969; Grassle, Sanders, 1973), it has become possible 

 to consider two seemingly mutually exclusive concepts of the biocenosis-- 

 the statistical and biological ones--as two sides of a single coin. It 

 can be thought that the biologic concept of the biocenosis analyzes the 

 dynamics of the process of development of the architectonics (structure) 

 of the community, while the statistical concept studies the result of this 

 process, i.e., the structure of the climax community. In discussing the 

 question of the structure of a community, we silently assume that the 

 wery concept "community = biocenosis" is unambiguously understood and 

 reflects the actual natural phenomenon. However, this is far from completely 

 accepted. 



First of all, the concept of the community as an undivided unity of 

 plant and animal organisms is widespread in ecology (V, H. Beklemishev, 

 1928; Kashkarov, 1933), as is the concept of the biocenosis as a union of 

 organisms capable of independent existence (Allee and others, 1949). Many 

 authors use the term biocenosis to refer only to a self-sustaining, ener- 

 getically autonomous "large community," including producers, consumers and 

 reducers (see Za'fka, 1967), From this standpoint, the Mobius biocenosis is 

 not a biocenosis at all, but only a dependent or incomplete community; the 

 population of an oyster bank, for which the term was first suggested, 

 includes almost no producers and exists primarily on the organic matter 

 (detritus) which is produced in other communities. If we strictly follow 

 this point of view, we cannot apply the concept of the biocenosis to the 

 benthos of zones below the lower boundary of the phytal area, in other 

 words to the population of spaces covering more than 2/3 of the surface of 

 the Earth; this concept is then also inapplicable to the fauna of the 

 bathypelagic and abyssopelagic zones, as well as the oligotrophic areas of 

 the pelagic zones in the tropical oceans. In other words, if trophic 

 completeness and functional independence are considered necessary charac- 

 teristics of a biocenosis, we must state that there is but one biocenosis 

 on Earth--the Geomeride. It seems more correct to consider a community in 

 its initial Mobius significance as a set of living organisms within the 

 limits of a homogeneous biotope. A biocenosis may include either organisms 

 of all trophic levels, or only consumers. 



