Natural History

Competitive exclusion principle

In ecology, the competitive exclusion principle, sometimes referred to as Gause's law, is a proposition that two species which compete for the same limited resource cannot coexist at constant population sizes. When one species has even the slightest advantage over another, the one with the advantage will dominate in the long term. This leads either to the extinction of the weaker competitor or to an evolutionary or behavioral shift toward a different ecological niche. The principle has been paraphrased in the maxim "complete competitors cannot coexist".

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Collared brown lemur
• ▸International Institute of Refrigeration
• ▸Atlantic puffin

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