Instead, three potential outcomes can result from strong interspecific competition: competitive exclusion, local extinction and niche differentiation.

What are the characteristics of interspecific competition?

Interspecific competition may occur when individuals of two separate species share a limiting resource in the same area. If the resource cannot support both populations, then lowered fecundity, growth, or survival may result in at least one species.

What does interspecific competition result in?

Interspecific competition often leads to extinction. The species that is less well adapted may get fewer of the resources that both species need. As a result, members of that species are less likely to survive, and the species may go extinct.

Is a dominance hierarchy interspecific or intraspecific?

Intraspecific competition > interspecific (Figure 1c)—Species use largely different resources (e.g. by resource partitioning) and interact behaviourally much less with heterospecifics than conspecifics, so dominance hierarchies are largely intraspecific.

What are the effects of intraspecific competition?

Intraspecific competition can be intense and adversely affects fitness at high population densities. High population density leads to reduced survival rates, slow growth rate, lowered fecundity, and decreased reproductive rate (Kisimoto, 1965; Denno, 1979; Kuno, 1979; Denno and Roderick, 1990).

What does interspecific competition represent?

Interspecific competition is the competition between individuals of different species. Under this competition type we also recognize two types of competition but the interaction is between individuals of different species and not individuals of the same population as is the case in intraspecific competition.

What do you understand by intraspecific and interspecific competition?

Intraspecific competition is an interaction in population ecology, whereby members of the same species compete for limited resources. … By contrast, interspecific competition occurs when members of different species compete for a shared resource.

How interspecific competition influences the niche of a species?

In interspecies competition, two species use the same limited resource. Competition has a negative effect on both of the species (-/- interaction). … Two species whose niches overlap may evolve by natural selection to have more distinct niches, resulting in resource partitioning.

What is the distinction between interspecific competition and intraspecific competition?

Intraspecific competition occurs between members of the same species. For example, two male birds of the same species might compete for mates in the same area. … Interspecific competition occurs between members of different species. For example, predators of different species might compete for the same prey.

How does intraspecific competition affect microbes?

In the presence of microbes, as water availability decreased the strength of intraspecific competition generally increased. Our results suggest that soil microbes may play a role in stabilizing coexistence by increasing conspecific negative density dependence, especially in drier environments.

What is interspecific competition give an example?

Interspecific competition is a form of competition between different species of the same ecological area. An example of interspecific competition is between lions and leopards that vie for similar prey. One species may be favoured over the other that vies for the same limited resource.

What is meant by interspecific competition give one example?

Interspecific competition: It is an interaction between individuals of different species where both species get negatively affected. For example, the competition between flamingoes and resident fishes in South American lakes for common food resources i.e., zooplankton.

What does the word interspecific mean?

: existing, occurring, or arising between species an interspecific hybrid.

What do you mean by interspecific interaction?

Interspecific interactions occur when the actions, traits, or density of individuals of one population result in a change in some attribute of another species’ population.

How does interspecific competition influence population size?

Interspecific Competition and Species Abundances. Competition can be a powerful force affecting the abundance of populations. Competition will reduce the amount of available resources to each species, when that resource is in short supply. … That is, one species is harmed more than the other.

What effect does intraspecific competition have on the individuals of a species?

For many species, intraspecific competition has strong effects on how population size varies over time. At high density, growth is reduced, fecundity is suppressed, and survival is affected. As a result, the size of the population increases more slowly stabilizes, and then eventually starts declining.

Why is intraspecific competition more intense?

Intraspecific competition is usually more intense than interspecific competition because the individuals have the same niche so are competing for exactly the same resources. Individuals that are better competitors will have a greater chance of surviving to reproduce and pass on their genes.

What does lotka Volterra predict?

The Lotka–Volterra equations predict that the winner of exploitative competition for resources in stable environments should be the species with the greater K or carrying capacity, that is, the more efficient user of the resource.

How do you remember interspecific and intraspecific?

If you break the two terms down, intraspecific just means within a species, while interspecific means between them. Consequently, interspecific competition is all about competition between two or more species, while intraspecific competition involves different individuals of the same species.

Why is intraspecific competition stronger than interspecific competition?

Generally, intraspecific competition is stronger than interspecific competition, so competition coefficients are generally less than one. … Interspecific competition is usually weaker because two species never use exactly the same resources (they do not have the same ecological niche).

How does intraspecific competition and interspecific competition drive natural selection and evolution?

Intraspecific competition occurs when individuals of the same species vie for access to essential resources, while interspecific competition occurs between different species. … Moreover, because individual organisms vary in their reproductive success, intraspecific competition can be a selective factor in evolution.

How does intraspecific competition affect niche?

Intraspecific competition is believed to drive niche expansion, because otherwise suboptimal resources can provide a refuge from competition for preferred resources. … In stark contrast, when beetles were given a choice of resources, we found that competition caused niche contraction onto the ancestral resource.

How is interspecific relationship related to the concept of niche?

When the ability of a species to utilize resources is enhanced with the increase of the breadth value of its niche, competition may occur between it and another species when niche similarity proportion between the two species reveals a high value, and competitive degree between them strengthened with an increasing …

How might interspecific competition affect the reproductive success?

We found a strong tendency toward assortative mating throughout the field site. In areas of high interspecific competition, pairs that behaved the most similarly and displayed either extremely aggressive or extremely non-aggressive phenotypes experienced higher reproductive success.

What is the difference between interspecific and intraspecific variation?

What is the difference between interspecific variation and intraspecific variation? Interspecific = variation that exsists between different species. … Different genotypess result in variation in phenotype – the characteristics displayed by an organism.

What is the difference between intraspecific and intraspecific?

How did GF Gause describe competitive exclusion?

The explanation. The Russian ecologist G. F. Gause is best known for developing the competitive exclusion principle (Chapter 8, Gause, 1934). This principle asserts that no two species can exploit the environment in exactly the same way and coexist – one of the species will be excluded.