Limiting factor

This decreases the number of potential factors that could influence a biological process, but only one is in effect at any one place and time.

This recognition that there is always a single limiting factor is vital in ecology, and the concept has parallels in numerous other processes.

Thus the limiting factors hold down population in an area by causing some individuals to seek better prospects elsewhere and others to stay and starve.

Nutrient availability in freshwater and marine environments plays a critical role in determining what organisms survive and thrive.

The major elements that constitute >95% of organic matter mass are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus.

These minor elements are often only present in trace amounts but they are key as co-limiting factors as parts of enzymes, transporters, vitamins and amino acids.

Discovery of the Redfield ratio was a major insight that helped understand the relationship between nutrient availability in seawater and their relative abundance in organisms.

Redfield was able to notice elemental consistencies between carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus when looking at larger organisms living in the ocean (C:N:P = 106:16:1).

Redfield's opening statement in his 1934 paper explains "It is now well recognized that the growth of plankton in the surface layers of the sea is limited in part by the quantities of phosphate and nitrate available for their use and that the changes in the relative quantities of certain substances in seawater are determined in their relative proportions by biological activity".

When discussing suspended particle stoichiometry, higher N:P ratios are noted in oligotrophic waters (environments dominated by cyanobacteria; low latitudes/equator) and lower N:P ratios are noted in nutrient rich ecosystems (environments dominated by diatoms; high latitudes/poles).

The examples provided include: "limited machine hours and labor-hours and shortage of materials and skilled labor.

Other limiting factors may be cubic feet of display or warehouse space, or working capital.

This distinction makes sense only when the chemical equilibrium so favors the products to cause the complete consumption of one of the reactants.