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IS SPACE NECESSARY? INTERFERENCE COMPETITION AND LIMITS TO BIODIVERSITY
Author(s) -
Adler Frederick R.,
Mosquera Julio
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[3226:isnica]2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , interference (communication) , ecology , competition model , biodiversity , space (punctuation) , function (biology) , econometrics , biology , economic geography , mathematics , geography , computer science , economics , microeconomics , evolutionary biology , telecommunications , profit (economics) , channel (broadcasting) , operating system
A single trade‐off between competitive ability and mortality has been shown to support an arbitrarily large number of species in models of interference competition in spatially structured populations. We show that this results not from spatial structure, but instead from the assumption that a small difference in mortality translates into a large difference in competitive ability. We present graphical criteria for recognizing functions that support one, two, or more species. High levels of coexistence in models of this form depend on a steep slope or a discontinuous second derivative of the function relating mortality to competitiveness. These criteria are identical to those in models of interference competition that lack explicit spatial structure.