Niche Packing and Number of Species

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Abstract

Two generalizations of the one-dimensional close-packed niche model of May and MacArthur (1972) are proposed and tested on data available from literature. These generalizations are: (1) The species are packed in a more-dimensional niche space; (2) the stability analysis accounts for the smaller equilibrium populations in a more-dimensional niche space and enables a numerical estimate of the degree of environmental fluctuation. The dimensionality of the niche structure can be estimated from the number of neighbors in niche space. Pianka's (1974) data from lizard communities fit into a two-dimensional close-packed structure. It is shown that the relation between niche overlap and number of species found by Pianka can be predicted from the amount of environmental fluctuation (relative rainfall variance). Analysis of the term "diffuse competition" within this model framework shows that competition from a lot of neighbors is particularly effective if those neighbors are independent and has less effect if the neighbors compete strongly with each other.

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