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Contest Competition
In ecology, contest competition refers to a situation where available resources, such as food and mates, are utilized by one or a few individuals, thus preventing development or reproduction of other individuals. It refers to a hypothetical situation in which several individuals stage a contest for which one eventually emerges victorious and has sole access to the resource.
As contest competition allows the monopolization of resources, offspring will typically always be produced and survive until adulthood independent of the population size, resulting in stable population dynamics. The Beverton-Holt model is often used to represent population dynamics arising from contest competition. This model, and few other well-known population models, can be explicitly derived from individual-level processes assuming contest competition and a random distribution of individuals among resources.
Contest competition has been observed in primates. For example, in mountain gorillas, Gorilla beringei, higher ranking females had higher average food-site resident times and higher aggression and avoidance while eating than lower ranking females. In white-faced monkeys, Cebus capucinus, regardless of aggression, avoidance, or sex, higher ranking monkeys had higher energy intake within their group. For female Microcebus murinus groups, if the resource could be monopolized, they would compete within their group for it.
A controlled lab experiment with three parasitic wasp species (Dinarmus basalis, Anisopteromalus calandrae, and Heterospilus prosopidis) showed contest competition between the first larvae in the host and the second.
See also
- Intraspecific competition
- Scramble competition