BIO 2129 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Niche Differentiation, Phenotypic Plasticity, Character Displacement
8 Nov 2016
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12- biotic interaction ii: expanded consideration of competition and its implications. Need to check whether these ideas have any real world applications, not just mathematical models of lab models. Competitive exclusion can drive one of two strong competitors extinct (according to limiting similarity. Many species have sufficient phenotypic plasticity to alter their resource usage: niche partitioning. Change what they do to reduce resource competition. One resource with lots of niche overlap, resource competition. Go to different places in environment to acquire resources, in experiment, just observe where the different birds go. Where they go in the tree depends on the species and how long they stay there. Over evolutionary time, niche partitioning can lead to character displacement, certain displacement can increase success of passing on genes. Niche partitioning in the finches on galapagos island. All evolved from a single common ancestor that somehow made it to the far away isolated islands.
