Volunteer with Habitat Acquisition Trust!

Habitat Acquisition Trust is a regional land trust that

conserves nature on southern Vancouver Island.
Our programs include Restoration
of Covenants, Species at Risk
Monitoring, and Outdoor Education.

Volunteer opportunities include bimonthly restoration events, grant

writing, event planning,
fundraising, and monitoring.

Want to be more involved? Email volunteers@hat.bc.ca

Join Habitat
Acquisi;on Trust and
the Greater Victoria
Green Team for some
therapeu;c weed
pulling on Ruby Creek!

NOTE: This is a private
property, so you must
RSVP with HAT or
GVGT.

RSVP to:
volunteers@hat.bc.ca

Competition

Predator
Competitor

Competitor

Prey

What is
exponential
growth?
Exponential growth (and decay) occurs when growth rate is
proportional to the current value. Contrast with linear growth
where the rate of change is constant.

Exponential

Linear

Compound Interest

Gossip

Rate at which
a hot drink cools
(example of exponential decay)

Fashions
(growth &
decay)

Atmospheric pressure
at rising altitudes

Radioactive
Decay

Populations in resource
rich environments

Making beer - yeast is the population of interest here.

Population Abundance

Exponential Growth

TIME

Populations increases
exponentially when food
(and other factors i.e.
space) are not limiting.

Thomas Robert Malthus

(1766 1834)

Malthus Essay
on Population
Argues English
Poor Law is too
liberal and
undermines good
governance. Poor
should not be
allowed to
breed as inevitable
overpopulation
leads to social
unrest
Malthus + Darwin
= inhumane
Victorian classism

Darwin adapts
Malthus ideas
into his
struggle for
existence
arguments

Reproduction produces slight variations in individuals

Variants in a population possessing characters that
enhance resource acquisition will be more numerous
in subsequent generationevolution

Darwin recognized that a struggle for existence

is exerted on a population that, over generations,
can lead to change.
This descent with modification is also
known as natural selection
The differential survival and reproduction of
organisms because of differences in
their ability to utilize environmental resources
Leading to differential reproductive output
(aka fitness)

(K)

Competition

Thingvallavatn, Iceland
Landlocked for 10,000 yrs (brief evolutionary time). Did the
morphs evolve together (sympatrically) or apart (allopatrically)?

Small Benthivore

Large Benthivore

Planktivore

Piscivore

http://www.slowleadership.org/2006_07_01_slowleadership_archive.html

Charles Elton
(1900-1991)
The ecological function of a species is its
ecological niche more commonly known
today as the functional niche

When an ecologist says 'there goes a

badger,' he should include in his thoughts
some definite idea of the animal's place
in the community to which it belongs, just
as if he had said, 'there goes the vicar.'"
1958

Little brown bat

Both
nocturnal
insectivores
Mexican free-tailed bat

Therefore,
similar niches

Deciduous forest

Habitat Niche
Desert

Eltons Functional niche is obviously useful

but also has significant limitations. What are they?
i) Too broad particular interactions
are not clearly stated
ii) Not amenable to quantification,
can not be analyzed mathematically

Hutchinson (1957): For any species we can identify a tolerance

range of conditions and exploitable range of resources.
n biotic & abiotic resource axes are combined to yield
n dimensional hypervolumes

George Evelyn Hutchinson

(1903 1991)
Popularized the niche
concept by visualizing the niche
as the ecological space of
of the species

What determines the

number of organisms
in any one habitat?

FISH

Prey size =
One dimension of
resource use

Prey size + [O2] =

Two dimensions of
resource use

Prey size x [O2] x [salinity] = Three dimensional resource use

Other critical factors for fish?
Water temp., Depth, pH, etc..

hypervolume in
multidimensional space

Impossible to accurately quantify

all resources used by a species
Competition = resource must
be limiting
(demand>availability)
(Prey Size)

Consider the resource use curves for two species

Typically single resource use curves are normal (aka bell) shaped.
Niche breadth: tolerance end points for a single species
Niche separation: distance separating the means of two resource
use curves
Niche overlap: area of overlap of two or more resource use curves
- where competition is expected

Aerial Nectavores

World map of color coded by diversity of

vertebrate species

Birds

Mammals

Amphibians

Endemic
Birds

Competitive
Exclusion
Which cases reflect
intraspecific
competition and
which interspecific
competition?

Fundamental Niche: The en;re

mul;dimensional space represen;ng the total

poten;al range of condi;ons the organism could
func;on in and occupy in the absence of
compe/tors, predators and other interac/ng
species.

Realized Niche: The por;on of the fundamental

niche actually occupied by a species in the presence of

interac/ng species.

How to get more

species into a
Community?
Greater range of
resources
Increased degree of
specialization

More overlap

Full exploitation
(saturation)
10.1

(Temperature )

Niche overlap of
prey size in
species E & F
suggest intense
competition .
until the
temperature axis is
taken into
consideration
resulting minimal
realized
competition
between E & F.

(Prey Size)

MacArthur (1958) Each species forage

in slightly different habitat within a
tree thus the five species do not
occupy the same niche

Resolving the role of competition

Competition drives community evolution which sorts those species that can
coexist over time from those that cannot
Over time older community members become tightly packed in centre
Exclusion thins
species numbers and
character displacement
narrows niche
breadth and shifts
niche centroids
New species are
added at the
periphery, and
likewise have broad
niche breadth

Greater
Connectance

Niche breadth determines species generalist / specialist status

Energy expended in search

Who is the specialist?

Is there trophic competition

between the species?

Trophic Resource Use

Competition: Two species use the

same limited resource, or seek that
resource to the detriment of both

Limited resource: a critical resource for whose availability does

not meet demand. If the resource is critical to 2 species,
competition between species ensues and potential
population growth of both species is affected.

There are numerous types of competition

Mate
Competition

Who does the competing,

males or females? Why

Exploitative
Competition

What kind of
competition is
this?

.can be intraspecific

 or interspecific

Preemptive Competition

Preemptive
Competition

Both EXPLOITATIVE and PREEMPTIVE competition are

characterized by one group using up a resource to the
detriment of others.
But, when one individual (not necessarily a species)
interferes with the ability of another to access the resource
is called:

Interference competition

Interference competition: When organisms seeking a

common resource directly interfere with one another.
Can occur even if the shared resource is not limiting.
Examples of interference competition?

Allelopathy

Black walnut
(Juglans nigra)

Territoriality

Darwins Finches

an example of Adaptive Radiation

Hawaiian Honeycreepers

Among the most prevalent evidence

of competition in our society is

Branding