ABSTRACT
A species relies on a set of resources within its environment for all its basic needs, including food and substrates for travel, rest, and shelter. When one or more of these resources are limited, niche theory predicts that species living in the same place (sympatric species) should exploit different resources in order to avoid or reduce competition with each other (e.g., Gause 1934; Hutchinson 1959; Pianka 1981). Sympatric species may partition resources in their environment in different ways: through spatial use of their habitat (e.g., Ilse and Hellgren 1995; Vrcibradic and Rocha 1996), the methods they use for foraging (Bergallo and Rocha 1994; Slater 1994), diet choice (Churchfield, Nesterenko, and Shvarts 1999; Luiselli, Akani, and Capizzi 1998), and their activity patterns (Wright 1989). The result is niche partitioning, or niche differentiation, among sympatric species such that no two species use exactly the same set of resources.
