Webpages tagged with «Competition»
Understanding the changes in population abundance is essential to correctly manage and preserve the natural populations. Interaction between species, such as predation or competition, is an important factor affecting population dynamics. To understand population dynamics it is thus useful to study species interactions. In a recent study published in Biology Letters, we analysed the interaction between two iconic fish species of the Barents Sea: the capelin and the Atlantic cod.
In the Boreal-Arctic seas, the two most abundant gadoid fish are the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and the haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). Both tend to respond to climate warming by an abundance increase and a change of distribution. Are these changes affecting how they are interacting? Statistical analysis using a state-space threshold model of acoustic and trawl survey data on cod and haddock abundance indicates that the interaction is changing with sea temperature: the cod negatively affecting the haddock when sea temperature is over 4 °C.
In a study recently published in Ecology we find apparent competition between major zooplankton groups in a large marine ecosystem. Apparent competition is an indirect, negative interaction between two species or species groups mediated by a third species other than their prey.
Climate warming is known to affect predator-prey relationship and phenology. Less is known about competitive relationships specifically in a nonlinear framework. In a recent study, we studied this topic on…
passerine birds.
Short supplies of adequate nesting sites and food resources are often associated in discussions of the ultimate factors controlling seabird population size, distribution and breeding success. Shift of prey distribution may affect the interaction between seabirds breeding at the same site.
Understanding the interaction between species is particularly actual in marine systems where ecosystem approach of management is desirable. This is particularly the case in high latitude systems such as the Barents Sea where climate change effect is supposed to be the strongest.