| The stability analysis of natural communities and ecosystems requires quantitative means capable of evaluating the structural variability of the aquatic community or assemblage taken as a whole. Size spectrum (SS) provides such assessment and is most often applied to the size distribution of particles or organisms of the given community. Another old, but rarely used, special case of SS describes the size-frequency distribution of taxonomic units encompassed by an assemblage, and is called here 'taxonomic size spectrum' (TSS). The phytoplankton assemblage of the sea of the Galilee (Lake Kinneret), Israel, was used to compare several years (out of the 30-year monitoring period) characterized with the most pronounced abnormalities in many biotic and abiotic... |
