Competition has the potential to structure communities, either by excluding species, affecting the size of populations of competitors, or by changing the distribution of species within space. Studying the impact of competition is challenging as the absence of competition currently could be the result of competition in the past driving niche partitioning, or could be evidence that competition never existed. Two questions that researchers have focussed on have been:
- How prevalent is current competition in natural communities?
- Are the patterns in existing communities due to competition or due to mere chance?