The Size- and Trait-Based Approach

This chapter outlines four future research questions where the size- and trait-based theory can be applied: stochasticity, behavioral ecology, coupling to primary production, and thermal ecology and climate change. The chapter first argues that differences in growth can be modeled with the size-based framework by introducing stochasticity into the feeding interaction. Next, the chapter contends that the behavioral response to food and predation risk has potentially big implications for community dynamics because it changes a key element in the model—namely, the interaction between individuals. On the matter of production, the chapter demonstrates that changing the carrying capacity or the productivity of the resource changes the food environment for the fish and that changes in the primary–secondary production would also have an impact on the carrying capacity of the stock-recruitment relation. Finally, the chapter looks at how increasing temperatures affect fish populations and communities on at least two time scales: on the short term is the direct physiological response to a temperature increase in terms of increasing metabolic demands. On the longer time scale is the ecological response where some species in a community will be replaced by other, better adapted, species.