TY - GEN ID - 11416080 TI - Competition and Coexistence AU - Sommer, Ulrich. AU - Worm, Boris. PY - 2002 SN - 3540433112 3642628001 3642561667 PB - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg : Imprint: Springer, DB - UniCat KW - Issue KW - animals KW - co-existence KW - competition KW - ecology KW - models KW - plankton KW - spatial processes KW - Community ecology, Biotic. KW - Biodiversity. KW - Evolutionary biology. KW - Plant ecology. KW - Animal ecology. KW - Microbial ecology. KW - Community & Population Ecology. KW - Evolutionary Biology. KW - Plant Ecology. KW - Animal Ecology. KW - Microbial Ecology. KW - Environmental microbiology KW - Microorganisms KW - Ecology KW - Microbiology KW - Animals KW - Zoology KW - Botany KW - Phytoecology KW - Plants KW - Vegetation ecology KW - Animal evolution KW - Biological evolution KW - Darwinism KW - Evolutionary biology KW - Evolutionary science KW - Origin of species KW - Biology KW - Evolution KW - Biological fitness KW - Homoplasy KW - Natural selection KW - Phylogeny KW - Biological diversification KW - Biological diversity KW - Biotic diversity KW - Diversification, Biological KW - Diversity, Biological KW - Biocomplexity KW - Ecological heterogeneity KW - Numbers of species KW - Biocenoses KW - Biocoenoses KW - Biogeoecology KW - Biological communities KW - Biomes KW - Biotic community ecology KW - Communities, Biotic KW - Community ecology, Biotic KW - Ecological communities KW - Ecosystems KW - Natural communities KW - Population biology KW - Floristic ecology UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:11416080 AB - The question "Why are there so many species?" has puzzled ecologist for a long time. Initially, an academic question, it has gained practical interest by the recent awareness of global biodiversity loss. Species diversity in local ecosystems has always been discussed in relation to the problem of competi tive exclusion and the apparent contradiction between the competitive exclu sion principle and the overwhelming richness of species found in nature. Competition as a mechanism structuring ecological communities has never been uncontroversial. Not only its importance but even its existence have been debated. On the one extreme, some ecologists have taken competi tion for granted and have used it as an explanation by default if the distribu tion of a species was more restricted than could be explained by physiology and dispersal history. For decades, competition has been a core mechanism behind popular concepts like ecological niche, succession, limiting similarity, and character displacement, among others. For some, competition has almost become synonymous with the Darwinian "struggle for existence", although simple plausibility should tell us that organisms have to struggle against much more than competitors, e.g. predators, parasites, pathogens, and envi ronmental harshness. ER -