Fill in the blank. Two species competing for the same resource can avoid competition by choosing different habits. This phenomenon is called _________ and was supported by______

Step-by-step solution

While they do not rule out the occurrence of interspecific competition in nature, they point out that species facing competition might evolve mechanisms that promote coexistence rather than exclusion. One such mechanism is ‘resource partitioning’. If two species compete for the same resource, they could avoid competition by choosing, for instance, different times for feeding or different foraging patterns. MacArthur showed that five closely related species of warblers living on the same tree were able to avoid comp