Question

Justify the following statement with suitable proof/examples:

‘Competition is not limited to closely related species.’

Answer 1

Competition is not restricted to closely related species because even totally unrelated species may require the same limiting resource. For example, in some shallow South American lakes, visiting flamingoes and resident fishes compete for the same food resource, zooplankton. This proves that interspecific competition can occur between distantly related species as long as they share a common resource requirement.