Quick Facts
- Also called:
- Gauseās principle, or Grinnellās axiom
- Related Topics:
- competition
- amensalism
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
principle of competitive exclusion
biology
Also known as: Gauseās hypothesis, Gauseās principle, Grinnellās axiom(Show More)
principle of competitive exclusion, (after G.F. Gause, a Soviet biologist, and J. Grinnell, an American naturalist, who first clearly established it), statement that in competition between species that seek the same ecological niche, one species survives while the other expires under a given set of environmental conditions. The result is that each species occupies a distinct niche.

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">