Shorygin, 1955: Turpaeva, 1949, 1957). Shorygin's "sharp-topped" bio- 

 cenosis, i.e., a community with sharp domination of one species (or life 

 form), will correspond in this case to the community of an edifier species 

 or the biogenic coenotype of Lindroth,* while the "flat-topped biocenosis," 

 without sharp domination of one species (or life form) will correspond 

 to the abiogenic or plateau coenotype, i.e., a community of independent 

 species. 



The direct practical application of the concept just described is 

 related to the identification of the boundaries of communities. This 

 question has been greatly discussed in the literature (see Odum, 1975, 

 Chapter 6, paragraph 3). It has been the practice of domestic specialists 

 in the study of benthic fauna to make wide use of the principle of separa- 

 tion of biocenoses by the dominant (in biomass) species in a given sample 

 or group of samples taken at the same or neighboring stations (Vorob'yev, 

 1949; Neyman, 19638). If we accept the concept of the community as a 

 continuum, it becomes impossible to distinguish communities on the basis 

 of this characteristic. This would be impossible, even when the equipment 

 usually used in expeditions for quantitative sampling could give us a 

 completely adequate idea of the biomass of each species, which is not the 

 case. At the present time, it is most frequently recommended that com- 

 munities be differentiated by using the method of distinguishing recurrent 

 groups (Fager, 1957, 1963; Fager, McGowan, 1963) and various variants of 

 multidimensional analysis. 



The initial question in the problem of the community as a continuum-- 

 the existence or nonexistence of an internal organizational factor--can 

 now in principle be considered answered, since it has been demonstrated 

 (Patten, 1961c, 1952, etc.) that the stability of a community of organisms 

 is greater than the stability of their environment. Natural communities 

 evolve, adapting their structure to the environmental conditions and 

 optimizing their species composition and interspecific quantitative 

 relationships. Maintenance of a stable structure of the community requires 

 certain expenditures of energy, defined by the flow of negentropy (Patten, 

 1961a). The community reacts to environmental conditions in such a way as 

 to create a structure allowing the greatest energy yield ("income") given 

 the available distribution of resources. Therefore, communities which pay 

 the lowest price (measured in units of negentropy) to maintain the 

 corresponding structure receive a selective advantage (Patten, 1961b, 1953), 

 Thus, certain states of communities of organisms are truly more stable than 

 others, even with intermediate values of abiotic environmental factors. 



*In the limiting case, a biogenic coenotype consists of a community 

 consisting of an edifier species and species directly related to it. This 

 type of community is a consortium, which geobotanists define as a combination 

 of dissimilar organisms closely related to a productive organism or popula- 

 tion (core of the consortium) and with each other in their vital activity. 

 An oyster bank is an example of a consortium. 



10 



