Information Concept in Ecology 



141 



Since everyone in ecology understood that organisms ate food and 

 that they did so for the energy it contained, Schrodinger's sug- 

 gestion was ignored. In 1949, however, another physicist, Brillouin 

 (4), elaborated further in a manner more harmonious with the 

 climate of trophodynamic thought: "The earth ... is constantly 

 receiving energy and negative entropy from outside . . . life feeds 

 on high grade energy or 'negative entropy' ... all experimental 

 measures show that the entropy of the refuse is larger than that 

 of the food." This established a definite connection with ecological 

 thinking, and further rapport developed in 1953 with the appear- 

 ance of papers by Branson (5) and Linschitz (6) which amplified 

 the theme along thermochemical lines. This work was soon fol- 

 lowed by several publications in ecological journals which at- 

 tempted to relate information theory to community trophociy- 

 namics (7, 8). 



In the present paper some aspects of the organization and 

 behavior of plankton communities are discussed in an informational 

 and trophodynamic context. In the development, such communities 

 will come to take the logical form of a rational utility-seeker (9), 



'7 "'8 ~9 ^10 ^11 



Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a hypothetical food chain. 



