Open AccessAn experimental analysis of competitive indeterminacy in Tribolium.
Author(s) -
David B. Mertz,
D. A. Cawthon,
Taesung Park
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.73.4.1368
Subject(s) - indeterminacy (philosophy) , biology , replicate , evolutionary biology , identity (music) , competitive equilibrium , economics , mathematical economics , statistics , mathematics , epistemology , philosophy , physics , acoustics
This report reexamines experimentally the problem of competitive indeterminacy in mixed-species populations of the flour beetles, Tribolium confusum and T. castaneum. Indeterminacy takes the form of alternative competitive outcomes: in some replicate cultures one species exterminates the other with a probability, say p, whereas in others, the opposing species wins with a complementary probability, 1-p. The conventional explanation for this is the genetic founder effect hypothesis--an explanation based on genetic stochasticity. The experiment reported here partitioned indeterminacy into founder effect and nonfounder effect components. The results implicate demographic stochasticity, not classical genetic founder effect, as a factor influencing the identity of the winning species.
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