Marginal product pricing in the ecosystem

Through an analogy with economics, a comparative static theory is developed for ecological systems. The basic assumption is that components of the ecosystem behave in such a way as to maximize their storage with respect to their material flows over a particular period of time. This concept leads to the theory that a biological component will adjust its marginal productivity with respect to each of its energy flows to be equal to the energy intensity (price) of that flow. The result is additional information about the relationships between energy and mass flows in the ecosystem. Equilibrium and cropping conditions are included and a connection with input-output theory is made. Example systems are developed to illustrate the theory.