BIOB50 Lecture 6 Notes - Competition (Chapter 7, excluding 7.

4)
Learning Goals
● Understand and be able to use the basic principles and terminology describing competition
● Become familiar with Gause’s experiments and the Principle of Competitive Exclusion
● Understand and be able to apply the Lotka-Volterra model for competition. Understand how the
model links the persistence of competing species to their fundamental niches through resource
utilization curves
● Understand the long-term outcomes of competitive interactions, including extinction, exclusion,
and evolution, as well as the context-dependence of competitive interactions and outcomes, for
example, in the context of climate change
Competition: The Basics

Competition: Definition
● Competition: is a non-trophic interaction between individuals, in which each is negatively affected by
their shared use of a resource that limits their, growth, survival, and/or reproduction.
Resource: prey
Competition - Intraspecific vs Interspecific Competition
● Competition occurs between individuals of the same species (intraspecific competition) and between
members of different species (interspecific competition)

Who is Competing with Whom?

● Competition reduces the amount of a resource in short supply available to each species. Often, the
effects of competition are asymmetrical, with one species harmed more by the other than vice
versa.
Interference vs Exploitation Competition
● Interference competition occurs when one species directly interferes with its competitor’s ability to
access a limited resource.
○ E.g. male polar bears fighting for access to mates
○ E.g. predators fighting for a kill
○ E.g. zebra mussels restrict the filter feed of other mussels by growing on them

Think- Pair- Share

For each of the following: exploitation competition, or interference competition, or elements of both?
a) Professional sports (e.g. basketball)
b) Polar bear mating
c) College admission

Ans (a = both, interference: taking ball away // exploitation: preventing player from getting the ball, b = both,
interference: fighting // exploitation: faster males can get to females faster, c = exploitation)
COMPETITION & NICHE SPACE: The Principle of Competitive Exclusion
Gause’s Experiments
● Georgii Gause provided the earliest experiments (1930s) formally investigating competition by raising
three species of paramecia (unicellular protozoans, commonly found in ponds and lakes) in test tubes
filled with bacteria and yeast for food, separately and combined.

● Three species of Paramecium were grown in tubes filled with bacteria and yeast for food
Gause’s Experiments & The Principle of Competitive Exclusion
● The Principle of Competitive Exclusion: When two species overlap substantially in their resource
use, even a slight advantage in acquiring the resource by individuals of one species will impose fitness
costs on individuals of other species that drives them to extinction.

The competitive exclusion principle states that when there is a complete overlap in resource use (or complete
niche overlap), two species cannot coexist due to competitive interactions. In this illustration, species 2 has no
resource it can access outside the influence of species 1.
The Principle of Competitive Exclusion: Fundamental vs Realized Niche
The Principle of Competitive Conclusion restricts species to only parts of their fundamental niche: their
realized niche (recall from Lecture 3):
● Realized niche = set of environmental conditions where the species occurs
● Fundamental niche = set of environmental conditions that a species could tolerate

THE LOTKA-VOLTERRA MODEL OF COMPETITION

Model derivation
● To understand the effects of competition on population growth, first recall how negative density-
dependence (i.e., intraspecific competition) affects population growth. E.g., in the continuous-
time logistic growth model:

Model derivation
Competition Coefficients
The Lotka-Volterra Model of Competition
Together, these equations are known as the Lotka-Volterra competition model. They aim to describe the
population growth of two competing species over time.
The Lotka-Volterra competition model: Calculating the Zero-Growth Isoclines
Isocline = a line representing all points where a species has zero population growth on a phase plane graph

Phase Planes
Phase-plane graph: a graphical representation of
two population densities simultaneously, with the
density of one species given along one axis and the
density of the other species given along the other
axis. Used to explore outcomes of interspecific
competition and exploiter-prey interactions
● The basic layout of phase-plane graph for
Lotka-Volterra two-species competition
equations:
The Lotka-Volterra Model of Competition: Testing a First Prediction: Species Remain Below their Carrying
Capacity when in Competition with Another Species

Determining Equilibria by Plotting Zero-Growth Isoclines

Relating Model Outcomes to Real-World Populations

LONG-TERM OUTCOMES OF COMPETITION Extinction, Exclusion, Evolution

Exclusion & Extinction
As discussed in Lecture 3, competition restricts species to only part of their fundamental niche: their realized
niche. Species may be excluded from certain areas by superior competitors, or, in the extreme case, even go
extinct. It is, however, difficult to demonstrate that a specific absence is due to competitive effects: if a species
does not occur somewhere, how do you distinguish between whether it previously went extinct due to
competition and alternative hypotheses? We refer to this as a the Ghost of Competition Past: past
competition may explain many current ecological patterns, but in most cases, we will never know.
Examples
Two closely related species of salmon were examined for interspecific competition effects in streams.
- Sympatry = coexistence of individuals of two species in same spatial location
- Allopatry = existence of groups in separate and unconnected locations

Closely related squirrels distribute habitat use similarly:

Long-Term Outcomes of Competition Evolution: Resource Partitioning & Character Displacement

● Character displacement example: Beak sizes of different species of Galapagos finches

THE CONTEXT-DEPENDENCE OF COMPETITION
Example: Disease

Think-Pair-Share
Competition pervades most aspects of most organisms’ lives. Do you see any practical applications of the
concepts discussed in this lecture for human societies?

Ans: competition for jobs, getting into a good school, competition for food/selection of clothes

Isocline should be pointed left and down (answer = species 1 goes extinct).
● If it’s above the line, there are not enough resources for the species. If it’s below the line, there is more
than enough resources for the species.
● Since the isocline is pointing left and down, the average isocline arrow is going to point in the upper left
quadrant, where we then end up above species one’s line and below species two’s line. Thus, there will
be enough resources for species 2 but not species 1, meaning species 1 will go extinct.
Q
Q

Q
Q
From quiz 7:
The following figure depicts zero-growth isoclines for a predator (solid line) and a prey (dotted line)
population when prey population growth is density-dependent. For which of these points would we
expect the predator population to increase and the prey population to decrease?