Trait Structure of the Fish Community

This chapter calculates the abundance (or biomass) of all species in a community as a function of their asymptotic size. It develops a purely analytical theory of the asymptotic size trait distribution in a fish community. The theory is based upon the Sheldon community spectrum developed in Chapter 2, and the new theory is used here to formulate an “extended” Sheldon conjecture. The analytic theory describes only a steady-state solution, which is of limited use for impact assessments of fishing; that requires a dynamic trait-based size spectrum model, which is next developed. To conclude, the chapter demonstrates how the trait-based model can be extended to model specific stocks embedded in a food web.