Species Interactions and Competition MCQ - Practice Questions & Answers

Quick Facts

Competition

Competition can be best defined as a process in which the fitness of one species (measured in terms of its ‘r’ the intrinsic rate of increase) is significantly lower in the presence of another species.
It is a type of interaction, where both the species suffer.
Competition occurs when closely related species compete for the same resources that are limited.
Some totally unrelated species could also compete for the same resources. For example, in some shallow South American lakes, visiting flamingoes and resident fishes compete for their common food, i.e., zooplanktons.
In interspecific competition, the feeding efficiency of one species might be reduced due to the interfering and inhibitory presence of the other species, although the resources are plenty.
For example, the Abingdon tortoise in Galapagos Islands became extinct within a decade after goats were introduced on the island, apparently due to the greater browsing efficiency of the goats.
Competitive release is a phenomenon, in which a species whose distribution is restricted to a small geographical area is found to expand its distributional range dramatically, when the competing species is experimentally removed.
Connell’s elegant field experiments showed that on the rocky sea coasts of Scotland, the larger and competitively superior barnacle Balanus dominates the intertidal area, and excludes the smaller barnacle Chthamalus from that zone.