Size-asymmetric competition
Size-asymmetric competition refers to situations in which larger individuals exploit disproportionately greater amounts of resources when competing with smaller individuals. This type of competition is common among plants but also exists among animals. Size-asymmetric competition usually results from large individuals monopolizing the resource by "pre-emption". i.e. exploiting the resource before smaller individuals are able to obtain it. Size-asymmetric competition has major effects on population structure and diversity within ecological communities. Definition of size asymmetry Resource competition can vary from complete symmetric (all individuals receive the same amount of resources, irrespective of their size, known also as scramble competition) to perfectly size symmetric (all individuals exploit the same amount of resource per unit biomass) to absolutely size asymmetric (the largest individuals exploit all the available resource). The degree of size asymmetry can be described by the parameter θ in the following equation focusing on the partition of the resource r among n individuals of sizes Bj. ri refers to the amount of resource consumed by individual i in the neighbourhood of j. When θ =1, competition is perfectly size symmetric, e.g. if a large individual is twice the size of its smaller competitor, the large individual will acquire twice the amount