Essay On Krebs Ecology

Introduction According to Charles J. Krebs ecology is the “scientific study of the interaction between organisms and their environment that determine their distribution and abundance” (Krebs 1978). The environment is made up of different components that are classified as abiotic and biotic. Abiotic deals with nonliving and physical elements like rain, wind, soil or pollutions. Biotic are living components that include predation, parasites, and competition. Competition is an interaction between organisms that compete for resources and it can lower the population of one organism because the other one is better fit for the environment. Furthermore, the purpose of this laboratory exercise is to conduct an experiment as to why the two species of …show more content…
The evidence that corroborates competition is that the percentages were 57% and 58% which dictates that competition can explain cohabitation. Furthermore the competitive exclusion hypothesis states that no two species can occupy the same niche and coexist. In figure one, we can see that PcMix was starting to diminish because it cannot inhabit the same niche and would have continued to decrease until extinction. The niche structured is made up of resource continuum which leads to resource partitioning. Resource continuum is when the Pa and Pc utilized the same food source leading to resource partitioning. To avoid competing, the Pa and Pc portioned the resources as to avoid extinction. Moreover, one similar experiment done was by Gause which derived the competitive exclusion hypothesis. The main differences between our experiment and his are we did not have a lag phase because we did not sample every day, instead we started in exponential. He managed to get similar numbers when beginning the experiment and we started with a random number. In conclusion, in his results, Pc became extinct which we only had decreasing