Rethinking some roots of ecosystem approach in aquatic ecology: between the food cycle and lake metabolism

Abstract

The present study provides new insight into the key aspects of the early formative period of the ecosystem concept in aquatic ecology. Raymond Lindeman’s trophodynamics is known to be a starting point for the development of the modern concept of ecosystem. The trophodynamic approach in ecology was proposed by Lindeman in his widely cited paper of 1942. Lindeman’s views are analyzed in comparison with the contemporary production studies in aquatic ecology. It is shown that a similar theoretical system has been proposed in the USSR at the end of the 1930s by Georgiy G. Vinberg. He introduced the concept of biotic balance based on the wide appraisal of the dark and light bottles method. The study shows that both Lindeman’s trophodynamics and Vinberg’s concept of biotic balance relied on an energy-based approach in considering the wholeness of a water body. The two scientists, however, differed in several important aspects concerning the interpretation of the role of living organisms. The holistic interpretation of ecosystem by Lindeman and Vinberg can be seen as part of the dilemma between physicalism and organicism. At the same time, the main emphasis in the concepts of both Vinberg and Lindemann was on the primary production component, a feature that was common to the first holistic systems in production hydrobiology (e.g., E. Naumann’s regional limnology). It is clear that modern problems of aquatic ecology should be addressed from the perspective of the organismocentric understanding of the ecosystem, but undoubtedly at the new level of development of this view.