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competitive exclusion. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Coined by Russian biologist George Gause.
Noun
competitive exclusion (countable and uncountable, plural competitive exclusions)
- (biology) The principle that states that two species who are very similar, and compete for the same resources, cannot coexist indefinitely, as the one with the slight advantage will outperform the other and eventually drive it into extinction.
- 2016, Kaj-Kolja Kleineberg & Marián Boguñá, Competition between global and local online social networks, Nature
- In ecology theory, the principle of competitive exclusion states that multiple species in competition for the same resource cannot coexist, as even the slightest advantage of one species over the other is successively amplified; a mechanism referred to as “rich get richer” or preferential attachment. This eventually leads to the extinction of the inferior species.