Summary

This brief review suggests that many of the consumer-resource interactions that underlie competition are quite different from those considered by MacArthur (1972), and most still have not been analysed in the context of competing consumers having homogeneous populations.

In most of the models considered in subsequent chapters I will restrict consid­eration to consumer populations in which individuals within a species are identical (or nearly identical) to each other in all their ecological traits. I also assume (in most but not all chapters) that there is no temporal environmental variation except that produced by the interaction of consumers and resources. These seemingly restrictive assumptions still encompass a wide range of models.