Every ecosystem is shaped by billions of invisible battles: organisms competing for light, nutrients, space, or mates. These competitive interactions determine which species survive, how they evolve, ...

When an individual directly alters the resource-attaining behavior of other individuals, the interaction is considered interference competition. For example, when a male gorilla prohibits other males ...

“The more species of Homo there were, the higher the rate of speciation. So when those niches got filled, something drove even more species to emerge. This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary ...

Halfway down the east slope of the Andes in Ecuador, sightings of the luminous yellow beaks of the chestnut-mandibled toucan are abruptly replaced by the colorful beaks of the white-throated toucan.

New research asks how local and regional factors determine the makeup of plant species in grasslands. Researchers from a restoration ecology lab are attempting to solve a longstanding question in ...

An ecosystem is not a still life. Even where everything looks stable—a woodland, a lake, the soil—the internal "bookkeeping" keeps changing: how many individuals belong to which species, and for how ...

Some plots became dominated by a small number of species, reducing biodiversity. Regional processes can help experts better understand how species populate an environment. Which factors do you ...