3 research outputs found
Competition between phytoplankton and bacteria: exclusion and coexistence
Resource-based competition between microorganisms species in continuous
culture has been studied extensively both experimentally and theoretically,
mostly for bacteria through Monod and and Contois "constant yield" models, or
for phytoplankton through the Droop "variable yield" models. For homogeneous
populations of N bacterial species (Monod) or N phytoplanktonic species
(Droop), with one limiting substrate and under constant controls, the
theoretical studies indicated that competitive exclusion occurs: only one
species wins the competition and displaces all the others. On the contrary for
attached bacterial species described by a Contois model, theory predicts
coexistence between several species. In this paper we present a generalization
of these results by studying a competition between these three different types
of microorganisms. We prove that the outcome of the competition is a
coexistence between several attached bacterial species with a free species of
bacteria or phytoplankton, all the other free species being washed out. This
demonstration is based mainly on the study of the substrate concentration's
evolution