The Adequacy of Body Size as a Niche Difference

One of the ways that animals are thought to coexist is by differences in their body sizes. Very simply, different sized animals eat different sized foods or otherwise utilize different resources, until at some point there is enough nonoverlap to allow coexistence. This paper inspects the role of body size in competition, using MacArthur's (1972) theoretical framework. As well as describing patterns of convergence and divergence, the model developed here unifies two seemingly contradictory concepts that have become established over the past decade: (1) the concept that differences in body size promote a "niche difference" (Hutchinson 1959; Brown and Wilson 1956; Schoener 1965, 1967, 1970, 1974a and b; Grant 1968, 1972), and (2) the concept that differences in body size set up a competitive gradient whereby the larger can exclude the smaller (Brooks and Dodson 1965; Galbraith 1967; Hall et al. 1971; but see Dodson 1974 and Zaret 1975 for alternative view).

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