Competition is one of the most important factors controlling the
distribution and abundance of living creatures. Sperm cells racing up
reproductive tracts, beetle larvae battling inside single seeds, birds
defending territories, and trees interfering with the light available to
neighbours, are all engaged in competition for limited resources. Along
with predation and mutualism, competition is one of the three major
biological forces that assemble living communities. Recent experimental
work, much of it only from the last few decades, has enhanced human
knowledge of the prevalence of competition in nature. There are acacia
trees that use ants to damage vines, beetles that compete in arenas for
access to dung balls, tadpoles that apparently poison their neighbours,
birds that smash the eggs of potential competitors, and plants that
associate with fungi in order to increase access to soil resources.
While intended as an up-to-date reference work on the state of this
branch of ecology, the many non-technical examples will make interesting
reading for those with a general interest in nature.
Greatly expanded from the first prize-winning edition, there are
entirely new chapters, including one on resources and another on
competition gradients in nature. The author freely ranges across all
major taxonomic groups in search of evidence. The question of whether
competition occurs is no longer useful, the author maintains; rather the
challenge is to determine when and where each kind of competition is
important in natural systems. For this reason, variants of competition
such as intensity, asymmetry and hierarchies are singled out for
particular attention. The book concludes with the difficulties of
finding general principles in complex ecological communities, and
illustrates the limitations on knowledge that arise out of the biased
conduct of scientists themselves.
Competition can be found elsewhere in living systems other than
ecological communities, at sub-microscopic scales in the interactions of
enzymes and neural pathways, and over large geographic areas in the
spread of human populations and contrasting ideas about the world. Human
societies are therefore also examined for evidence of the kinds of
competition found among other living organisms. Using an array of
historical examples, including Biblical conflicts, the use of noblemen's
sons in the Crusades, the Viking raids in Europe, strategic bombing
campaigns in the Second World War, and ethnic battles of the Balkans,
the book illustrates how most of the aspects of competition illustrated
with plants and animals can be extended to the interactions of human
beings and their societies.
