Shelford's law of tolerance
The Shelford's law of tolerance is a principle developed by American zoologist Victor Ernest Shelford in 1911. It states that an organism's success is based on a complex set of conditions and that each organism has a certain minimum, maximum, and optimum environmental factor or combination of factors that determine success is also taken into account, “A law stating that the abundance or distribution of an organism can be controlled by certain factors (e.g. the climatic, topographic, and biological requirements of plants and animals) where levels of these exceed the maximum or minimum limits of tolerance of that organism” (http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100500821). - ie not just minimum matter to sustaining local homeostasis, but maximum matter as well