We explore how competition drives species to evolve into non-overlapping ‘niches’, and how this can lead to interesting distributions of species across patches.
Key findings
- By reconceptualising the Hutchinsonian niche space to distinguish between substitutable and non-substitutable resources, we have shown that non-substitutable resources leave most potential niches unfilled.
- Extending the model to capture dispersal between patches (simulations below), we have shown that intermediate dispersal maximises global species richness.
