Mesocosm experiments provide a major test bed for models of plankton, greenhouse gas export to the atmosphere, and changes to ocean acidity, nitrogen and oxygen levels. A simple model of a mesocosm plankton ecology is given in terms of a set of explicit natural population dynamics rules that exactly conserve a key nutrient. These rules include many traditional population dynamics models ranging from Lotka-Volterra systems to those with more competitors and more trophic levels coupled by nonlinear processes. The rules allow a definition of an ecospace and an analysis of its behaviour in terms of equilibrium points on the ecospace boundary.
Ecological issues such as extinctions, plankton bloom succession, and system resilience can then be analytically studied. These issues are understood from an alternative view point to the usual search for interior equilibrium points and their classification, coupled with intensive computer simulations. Our approach explains why quadratic mortality usually stabilises large scale simulation, but needs to be considered carefully when developing the next generation of Earth System computer models. The ‘Paradox of the Plankton’ and ‘Invasion Theory’ both have alternative, yet straightforward explanations within these rules.