1. In the context of the science of ecology and the concept of niche specialization, briefly explain the competitive exclusion principle and resource portioning.

2. How did Gregor Mendel control breeding in the pea plants he used for his experiments?
by

Your answer

Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
To avoid this verification in future, please log in or register.

1 Answer

1.  In ecology, the competitive exclusion principle, sometimes referred to as Gause's law of competitive exclusion or just Gause's law,  is a proposition which states that two species competing for the same resources cannot coexist if other ecological factors are constant. When one species has even the slightest advantage or edge over another, then the one with the advantage will dominate in the long term. One of the two competitors will always overcome the other, leading to either the extinction of this competitor or an evolutionary or behavioral shift towards a different ecological niche. The principle has been paraphrased into the maxim "complete competitors cannot coexist".

2. Most of Mendel's work was done on the basis of very few pea plants as he was tryong to understand the genetics. His "control" was trying to always match the 3:1 ratio. This might arise if he detected an approximate 3 to 1 ratio early in his experiments with a small sample size, and continued collecting more data until the results conformed more nearly to an exact ratio. It is sometimes suggested that he may have censored his results.

by

Related questions

0 answers
asked Sep 30, 2013 by karuhetti (120 points) | 137 views
2 answers
1 answer
asked Jul 15, 2012 by billkoch (120 points) | 275 views
1 answer
1 answer
asked Feb 14, 2012 by anonymous | 288 views
1,290 questions
1,126 answers
30 comments
9,786 users