The importance of niche differentiation for coexistence on large scales

It is widely accepted that niche differentiation plays a key role in coexistence on relatively small scales. With regard to a large community scale, the recently propounded neutral theory suggests that species abundances are more influenced by history and chance than they are by interspecies competition. This inference is mainly based on the probability that competitive exclusion is largely slowed by recruitment limitation, which may be common in species rich communities. In this respect, a theoretical study conducted by Hurtt and Pacala (1995) for a niche differentiated community has been frequently cited to support neutral coexistence. In this paper, we focused on the effect of symmetric recruitment limitation on delaying species competitive exclusion caused by both symmetric and asymmetric competition in a large homogeneous habitat. By removing niche differentiation in space, we found that recruitment limitation could delay competitive exclusion to some extent, but the effect was rather limited compared to that predicted by Hurtt and Pacala's model for a niche differentiated community. Our results imply that niche differentiation may be important for species coexistence even on large scales and this has already been confirmed in some species rich communities. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.