ABSTRACT
The outcome of competing for a limiting resource is not obvious and depends upon a variety of circumstances. It would be tempting to think either that both species may coexist, though at reduced density, or else that one species may displace the other. However, coexistence is exceedingly unlikely. As a very strict rule, no two species can coexist on the same limiting resource. If they should try to do so, one species will outcompete the other and cause its extinction. This finding is encapsulated in Gause’s principle, named after Georgii Frantsevich Gause. It is also called the competitive exclusion principle (Hardin 1960). It was first established in mathematical models by Alfred James Lotka (1925) and Vito Volterra (1928), and later in laboratory experiments by Gause (1934).
