On Testing the Competition‐Colonization Trade‐Off in a Multispecies Assemblage

Abstract

The competition-colonization trade-off has long been considered an important mechanism explaining species coexistence in spatially structured environments, yet data supporting it remain ambiguous. Most competition-colonization research examines plants and the dispersal-linked traits of their seeds. However, colonization is more than just dispersal because rapid population growth is also an important component of colonization. We tested for the presence of competition-colonization trade-offs with a commonly used artificial assemblage consisting of protozoan and rotifer species, where colonization was the ability of a species to establish populations in patches. By ranking species according to their colonization abilities and their pairwise competitive interactions, we show that these species exhibit competition-colonization trade-offs. These results reveal that the competition-colonization trade-off exists within nonplant assemblages and that even in a laboratory setting, species are constrained to be either good competitors or colonizers but not both.

How do freshwater organisms cross the “dry ocean”? A review on passive dispersal and colonization processes with a special focus on temporary ponds

“…Species-poor communities are generally linked to recently formed water bodies (see , or to particular environmental conditions selecting for a reduced pool of ''stress-adapted'' species (Naselli-Flores et al, 2003). Species-rich communities show stronger and more complex biotic interactions that can impair the colonization success of new immigrants (Shurin, 2000;Cadotte et al, 2006). Moreover, immigrants can undergo Allee effects (Sarnelle & Knapp, 2004) which would further slow down their population growth rates.…”

Switch to a Novel Breeding Resource Influences Coexistence of Two Passerine Birds

“…Strong interference competitors can monopolize the highest quality resources, but may ignore lower quality resources, providing the opportunity for a subdominant competitor to coexist locally (Alatalo and Moreno, 1987). Moreover, interference ability often comes at the expense of investment in other traits such as dispersal, abiotic tolerances, reproductive investment or efficiency of resource use (Tilman, 1994;Hughes et al, 2003;Pfennig and Pfennig, 2005;Cadotte et al, 2006). Such trade-offs may allow species that are poor interference competitors to persist because the costs of strong interference ability may not be supported on low quality resources.…”

Competition–colonization dynamics in experimental bacterial metacommunities

“…Despite a general acceptance of the theoretical framework, to our knowledge there is no direct experimental treatment of the general predictions of the CC theory; in fact, indirect tests that attempted to document the existence of the CC trade-off have produced contradictory results in experimental [10][11][12][13] and observational studies of natural species assemblages [14][15][16][17][18] . Moreover, because the existence of a CC trade-off in an assemblage does not necessarily indicate that CC dynamics are determinant, indirect approaches have limited power to evaluate the theory.…”