BIOL240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Interspecific Competition, Competitive Exclusion Principle, Climax Community
13 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
A sense of community: a biological community is an assemblage of populations of various species living close enough for potential interaction. Interspecific interactions and community structure: there are a number of possible interspecific interactions that link the species of a community. Populations may interact with one another by competition, predation, herbivory, parasitism, disease, mutualism, and commensalism. Interspecific interactions can be symbolized by the positive (+) or negative ( ) effects of the interaction on the individual populations. 0 indicates that a population is not affected by the interaction. The effect of an interaction between two species may change as circumstances change. Interspecific competition can occur when species compete for a specific limiting resource. When two species compete for a resource, the result is detrimental to one or both species: strong competition can lead to the local elimination of one of the two competing species, a process called competitive exclusion.
