benthic biocenoses we have studied yield results which do not differ 

 greatly from this quantity. 



In connection with the above, it is obvious that the greatest 

 difficulty in the study of the transformation of biologic energy in 

 marine ecosystems is represented by empirical determination of the 

 growth of individuals and the production of specific populations under 

 their conditions of existence. However, due to the similar reaction to 

 changing environmental factors of different specific genotypes formed 

 under identical conditions (Golikov, 1973, 1975b), the production and 

 bioenergetic potential of species with comparable dimension-weight 

 characteristics under analogous conditions change in parallel. This 

 makes modelling of the production process of populations in natural 

 ecosystems possible, if we know the conditions of origin, density of 

 population and weight characteristics of the species making up the 

 populations. 



319 



