The effect of initial pattern on competitive exclusion

Rácz, É.V.P. and Karsai, J. (2006) The effect of initial pattern on competitive exclusion. Community Ecology, 7 (1). pp. 23-33. ISSN 1585-8553

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Abstract

We used cellular automata models to investigate the effect of initial pattern geometry on competition. We measured the average proportion of sites with foreign neighbours to track interspecific segregation during pattern development. Our simulation results show that intraspecific aggregation can considerably slow down the extinction of the weaker competitor. A series of experiments was performed to estimate the expected time to extinction for the weaker species. The perimeter-to-area ratio of the initial configuration proved to be an adequate determinant of expected timeto- extinction. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the degree of aggregation is closely related to the local density dependence of the colonization functions.

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