The hypothesis that species diversity reflects some balance between these mechanisms lies at the heart of classical ecological theory, and understanding the extent to which and the mechanisms by which these contrasting forces affect the diversity of ecological communities has been a central question in ecology. 454//11.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ĭompetitive exclusion and competitive release are two sides of the same coin: competitive exclusion refers to situations in which a species is excluded from a local community by competitive interactions with other species, while competitive release refers to situations in which a certain factor (hereafter, a 'releasing factor') limits the ability of the competitors to exclude a species, thereby allowing it to exist in the community.
įunding: This work was supported by the Nature and Parks Authority, the Ministry of Science and Technology TASHTIOT program, and the Israeli Science Foundation grants no. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Data are provided in the Supporting Information files and have been uploaded to. Received: Accepted: JPublished: August 18, 2016Ĭopyright: © 2016 Segre et al. PLoS ONE 11(8):Įditor: RunGuo Zang, Chinese Academy of Forestry, CHINA Citation: Segre H, DeMalach N, Henkin Z, Kadmon R (2016) Quantifying Competitive Exclusion and Competitive Release in Ecological Communities: A Conceptual Framework and a Case Study.