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Ecology

Competition and coexistence

Nature volume 402, pages 366–367 (1999)Cite this article

Early experimental and modelling work in community ecology1 led to the principle of competitive exclusion. This states that, among two or more species of primary producer — that is, plants — competing for a shared resource, only the best competitor will survive2. The apparent contradiction between competitive exclusion and the species richness found in nature has been a long-standing enigma. Explanations of why strong competitors do not inevitably have a stranglehold have invoked environmental disturbance and the differing resource requirements of different species. On page 407 of this issue, however, Huisman and Weissing3 present a way to reconcile the persistence of diversity with competitive exclusion in undisturbed ecosystems with few limiting resources.

The contradiction between the principle of competitive exclusion and the diversity of natural communities first became obvious for phytoplankton (Hutchinson's ‘paradox of the plankton’4). Planktonic algae share the same potentially limiting resources (light, carbon dioxode and mineral nutrients, namely nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, iron and possibly a few other trace elements), are suspended in a relatively well-mixed environment, and retrieve their nutrients from a common pool (the dissolved phase in the illuminated layer of water at the surface of seas or lakes). Experimental ecologists rose to Hutchinson's challenge, and their microcosm studies with planktonic algae became a cornerstone in developing both experiment and theory.

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  1. the Insitut für Meereskunde, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, Kiel, D-24105, Germany

    Ulrich Sommer

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  1. Ulrich Sommer
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Correspondence to Ulrich Sommer.

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Sommer, U. Competition and coexistence. Nature 402, 366–367 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/46453

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