Consumer effects on the vital rates of their resource can determine the outcome of competition between consumers.
Current competition theory does not adequately address the fact that competitors may affect the survival, growth, and reproductive rates of their resources. Ecologically important interactions in which consumers affect resource vital rates range from parasitism and herbivory to mutualism. We present a general model of competition that explicitly includes consumer-dependent resource vital rates. We build on the classic MacArthur model of competition for multiple resources, allowing direct comparison with expectations from established concepts of resource-use overlap. Consumers share a stage-structured resource population but may use the different stages to different extents, as they do the different independent resources in the classic model. Here, however, the stages are dynamically linked via consumer-dependent vital rates. We show that consumers' effects on resource vital rates result in two important departures from classic results. First, consumers can coexist despite identical use of resource stages, provided each competitor shifts the resource stage distribution toward stages that benefit other species. Second, consumers specializing on different resource stages can compete strongly, possibly resulting in competitive exclusion despite a lack of resource stage-use overlap. Our model framework demonstrates the critical role that consumer-dependent resource vital rates can play in competitive dynamics in a wide range of biological systems.
Duke Scholars
Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Population Dynamics
- Models, Biological
- Ecosystem
- Ecology
- Ecology
- Computer Simulation
- Competitive Behavior
- 31 Biological sciences
- 06 Biological Sciences
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Population Dynamics
- Models, Biological
- Ecosystem
- Ecology
- Ecology
- Computer Simulation
- Competitive Behavior
- 31 Biological sciences
- 06 Biological Sciences