Fig. 2.

Average fitness and stabilizing niche differences for each pair of species (denoted by a single point) in the experiment. The shaded gray area represents the region where the condition for coexistence is met ($\rho <{\kappa }_i/{\kappa }_j$, where species j is the fitness superior). Twelve species pairs fall in this region; in all other cases fitness differences exceed niche differences and one species is predicted to eventually exclude the other. Note that our experiment focused on interactions at a neighborhood spatial scale over a single generation and therefore does not capture the spatial and temporal heterogeneity that allows these pairs to coexist at the landscape scale.