A shift from exploitation to interference competition with increasing density affects population and community dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Intraspecific competition influences population and community dynamics and occurs via two mechanisms. Exploitative competition is an indirect effect that occurs through use of a shared resource and depends on resource availability. Interference competition occurs by obstructing access to a resource and may not depend on resource availability. Our study tested whether the strength of interference competition changes with protozoa population density. We grew experimental microcosms of protozoa and bacteria under different combinations of protozoan density and basal resource availability. We then solved a dynamic predator-prey model for parameters of the functional response using population growth rates measured in our experiment. As population density increased, competition shifted from expl

SUBMITTER: Holdridge EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4984507 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature