New study supports Darwin's hypothesis on competition between species

A new study provides support for Darwin's hypothesis that the struggle for existence is stronger between more closely related species than those distantly related.

"We found that species extinction occurred more frequently and more rapidly between species of microorganisms that were more closely related, providing strong support for Darwin's theory, which we call the phylogenetic limiting similarity hypothesis," said Lin Jiang, an assistant professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech.

Researchers at the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive in Montpellier, France conducted experiments with 10 common ciliated protist species in artificial, simplified ecosystems called microcosms. Other researchers helped the team generate a family tree to determine how closely related the 10 species were.

The study results showed that all species survived until the end of the experiment when alone in a microcosm. However, in more than half of the experiments in which protists were paired together, one of the two species dominated, leading to the extinction of the other species.

The researchers found that the frequency and speed of this extinction process -- called competitive exclusion -- was significantly greater between species that were more closely related. In addition, in microcosms where both competitors coexisted for the duration of the experiment, the abundance of the inferior competitor was reduced more as the phylogenetic relatedness between the two competitors increased.

The study also showed that the frequency of competitive exclusion was significantly greater between species that had similar mouth sizes.

"This study is one step toward a better understanding of how phylogenetic relatedness influences species interactions," said Jiang. "We hope our experimental validation of the phylogenetic limiting similarity hypothesis in microorganisms will encourage other ecologists to conduct additional studies with other types of organisms to further validate Darwin's hypothesis."

New study supports Darwin's hypothesis on competition between species

It was always supported.
Maybe unless you're a conspiracy theorist nut who believes we were created by the government.

reply to post by DuceizBack



As you can tell from every single one of my replies on the subject of evolution, I fully support it. This just confirms another aspect of the theory.

I.e. this is one more significant piece of evidence that supports the theory of evolution