maintenance

The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis [IDH] and the Gradual Climate Change Hypothesis [GCC] offer intuitively appealing, verbal non-equilibrium explanations to species coexistence in competitive communities, but so far they lack a solid theoretical background and a proper experimental methodology. To make them testable and comparable on a solid methodological basis, they should be formulated as well-defined non- equilibrium community dynamical models.

The intermediate disturbance hypothesis has been the focus of considerable analysis in terrestrial and aquatic systems. This model predicts that species diversity will be highest at intermediate frequencies of disturbance. Despite numerous theoretical and empirical analyses, the utility of the model is still the subject of intense debate.

The 'Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis' (IDH) is one mechanism suggested to explain indefinite species coexistence. Hutchinson's original concept of the IDH was of a mechanism based on patch dynamics, and logical consideration shows that IDH works only if interpreted this way. Dependence on patch dynamics distinguishes IDH from Gradual Climate Change (GCC), though they are distinct also in terms of premature death of individuals, species selectivity, and the suddenness and transience of the perturbation.