Beschreibung:
<jats:p>We present a consumer‐resource model in which individual consumers subsist on a continuum of resource distributed over a very large number of small “bite‐sized” patches, each patch being sufficiently small that all its resource is eaten whenever a consumer visits. This form of consumer–resource interaction forces a heterogeneous distribution of resource among the patches, and may dampen out the large amplitude, consumer‐resource cycles that are predicted by traditional models of well‐mixed, spatially homogeneous systems. The resource equilibrium does not increase with enrichment, a prediction that distinguishes this model from models that invoke direct or indirect consumer density dependence as a stabilizing mechanism.</jats:p>