Secondary production as part of bioenergetic theory—contributions from freshwater benthic science

Bioenergetics and energy flow studies have played a prominent role in ecology since the time of Raymond Lindeman's classic paper. Several early seminal studies, including Lindeman's, were on freshwater ecosystems, all of which included benthic secondary production as an important element. Independently of these energy flow studies, benthic ecologists have played a major role in developing the methods of population‐based secondary production, and produced the majority of all secondary production studies in ecology. These studies have not only contributed to our understanding of the importance of animals in ecosystem energy flow, but production is now used to address a wide variety of ecological questions from the construction of quantitative food webs, to examining predator‐prey relationships, to experimental studies of food resource use, to assessing the effects of nonnative species, pollution and catchment land‐use change. Unfortunately, appreciation of the utility of secondary production is largely restricted to aquatic ecologists, particularly those working in freshwater and marine benthic habitats. Further, treatment of secondary production is very limited in most general ecology texts. Continued use of secondary production to address a diversity of ecological questions should result in a greater appreciation of its advantages and cause it to become better known in the broader ecological community.