BIO120H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Competitive Exclusion Principle, Limiting Factor, Ecosystem Services
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BIO120H1 Full Course Notes
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Differences in how species interact with their environment counter the inevitable los of biodiversity that occurs when better competitors overrun their inferior counterparts. Crops + livestock we rely on for food are derived from wild species long ago domesticated. Future improvements to agricultural productivity and sustainability depend on genes derived from wild pop instead of domesticated. Large fraction of meds prescribed today contain chemical compounds originally isolated from wild orgs (aspirin = willow trees) Diverse habitats are increasingly understood to be more stable in provisioning ecosystem services: clean water + pollination of agriculture crops. *speciation: the evolutionary process by which new species are formed. Needed for ultimate generation of species diversity over time. Mystery of species coexistence is rooted in competitive exclusion principle: If the difference in the competitive ability of species is large, the poorer competitor will be rapidly excluded. If these differences are small, exclusion will be slow.
