Explaining biodiversity in nature is a fundamental problem in ecology. An outstanding challenge is embodied in the so-called Competitive Exclusion Principle: two species competing for one limiting resource cannot coexist at constant population densities, or more generally, the number of consumer species in steady coexistence cannot exceed that of resources. The fact that competitive exclusion is rarely observed in natural ecosystems has not been fully understood. Here we show that, by forming chasing pairs and chasing triplets among the consumers and resources in the consumption process, the Competitive Exclusion Principle can be naturally violated. The modeling framework developed here is broadly applicable and can be used to explain the biodiversity of many consumer-resource ecosystems and hence deepens our understanding of biodiversity in nature.

解释自然界的生物多样性是生态学中的一个基本问题。所谓的“竞争排斥原则”体现了一个严峻的挑战：竞争一种限制资源的两种物种不能以恒定的种群密度共存，或更普遍的说，稳定共存的消费物种的数量不能超过资源的数量。尚未完全理解在自然生态系统中很少观察到竞争排斥的事实。在这里我们表明，通过在消费过程中在消费者和资源之间形成追逐对和追逐三胞胎，自然会违反竞争排他性原则。