Character displacement is one of the most studied phenomena in evolutionary biology, yet research has narrowly focused on demonstrating whether or not displacement has occurred. We propose a new experimental approach, adopted from the coexistence literature, that directly measures interspecific competition among sympatric and allopatric populations of species. Doing so allows increased ability to (i) test predictions of character displacement without biases inherent to character-centric tests, (ii) quantify its effect on the stability of coexistence, (iii) resolve the phenotypic pathways through which competitive divergence is achieved, and (iv) perform comparative tests. Our approach extends research to forms of character displacement not readily identified by past methods and will lead to a broader understanding of its consequences for community structure.

角色置换是进化生物学中研究最多的现象之一，但研究仅集中于证明置换是否发生。我们提出了一种从共存文献中采用的新实验方法，该方法直接测量同养和异源物种之间的种间竞争。这样做可以提高（i）测试字符位移预测的能力，而不会以字符为中心的测试固有的偏差;（ii）量化其对共存稳定性的影响;（iii）解决实现竞争差异的表型途径，以及（iv）进行比较测试。