Contest competition

In ecology, contest competition refers to a situation in which available resources, such as food and mates, are utilized only by one or at most a few individuals. The name refers to a hypothetical situation in which several individuals stage a contest for which one eventually emerges victorious. Contest competition has been demonstrated in controlled laboratory experiments, for example among parasitic wasps. Contest competition is the opposite of scramble competition, a situation in which available resources are shared equally among individuals.