Schoener, T.W. 1974. Resource partitioning in ecological communities. Science 185
(4145):27-39.
Article Notes:
This article expounds about the concept of resource partitioning, or the differences in the
way species in the same community utilize resources.
Basic Gist: Resource partitioning allows you to analyze the limits that interspecific
competition place on the number of species that can coexist. Schoener asks what are the
predictions of competition models and to what extent are they confirmed by patterns of
resource partitioning?
Details: To answer this, he did a metaanalysis of animal taxa to come up with the most
important “dimensions” separating species (e.g. food size or nest location). He came up
with a set of overdisperion patterns which are predicted by a competition model: e.g.,
there should be regular spacing along a single dimension, there should be an increase in
the number of dimensions with increase in species number and there should be a
separation of species along complementary dimensions. From his analysis, he found
that: habitat dimensions are more important than food dimensions which are more
important than temporal dimensions in separating species, predators separate more often
by being active at different times of the day than other groups, vertebrate segregate less
by seasonal activity than do lower animals, etc.
Basically, this article gave more rigorous criteria for identifying resource
partitioning in terms of the distribution of niche differences. He also reviewed and
extends mathematical models that had been developed to address the relations of
competition, limiting similarity and species coexistence. “We require a holistic theory
that draws upon models at the individual and population levels”.
Draws from: Hutchingson (1959) Homage to Santa Rosa; or, Why are there so many
kinds of animals. American Naturalist 93:145-159. This article basically says that a
population can be characterized as being somewhere along each variable of a set of
environmental gradients, niches are intervals of population survival along each dimension
(e.g. nitrogen dimension or ph dimension).
Author Notes: Thomas Schoener (Phd Harvard, currently at UC Davis): An animal
ecologist known for his work on resource utilization, ecological niches and feeding
strategies. Also known for his work on mathematical models of population interactions,
territory size, food-web effects, and parasitoid occurrence; feeding strategies; island
ecology; lizard population biology; predation; and resource partitioning.
See also: Schoener, T.W. (1971) Theory of feeding strategies. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 2:369-404. This article led to more quantitative and general
theories of optimal feeding and foraging.