Word.ws English Dictionary

competitive exclusion

competitive exclusion noun: the principle that states that two species who are very similar, and compete for the same resources, cannot coexist indefinitely, as the one with the slight advantage will outperform the other and eventually drive it into extinction.

Noun

competitive exclusion (countable and uncountable, plural competitive exclusions)

  1. The principle that states that two species who are very similar, and compete for the same resources, cannot coexist indefinitely, as the one with the slight advantage will outperform the other and eventually drive it into extinction.
    • In ecology theory, the principle of competitive exclusion states that multiple species in competition for the same resource cannot coexist, as even the slightest advantage of one species over the other is successively amplified; a mechanism referred to as “rich get richer” or preferential...2016, Kaj-Kolja Kleineberg & Marián Boguñá, Competition between global and local online social networks, Nature

Forms of competitive exclusion

pluralcompetitive exclusions

Origin of competitive exclusion

Coined by Russian biologist Georgy Gause.

Questions about competitive exclusion

What does competitive exclusion mean?
Competitive exclusion means the principle that states that two species who are very similar, and compete for the same resources, cannot coexist indefinitely, as the one with the slight advantage will outperform the other and eventually drive it into extinction.
What part of speech is competitive exclusion?
Competitive exclusion is a noun.
What is the plural of competitive exclusion?
The plural of competitive exclusion is competitive exclusions.

Words near competitive exclusion in the dictionary

  1. competitive authoritarianism
  2. competitive authoritarianisms
  3. competitive eater
  4. competitive eaters
  5. competitive eating
  6. competitive exclusion
  7. competitive exclusions
  8. competitive market
  9. competitive markets
  10. competitive tendering
  11. competitive tenderings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: competitive exclusion (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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