Coexistence of Competitors in Patchy Environment with and without Predation

Patchy habitat structure is introduced into the Lotka-Volterra competition model by calculating average growth rates over a set of habitat patches, in which local population density varies. As in previous models of competition in patchy environment, two similar species may coexist, and in this model they always do; processes increasing spatial variance will facilitate coexistence. Equivalent predation is defined as a process of similarly searching for prey individuals regardless of species, both at the within-patch and between-patch level. It is concluded, contrary to previous results, that equivalent predation may facilitate prey coexistence, given sufficient spatial variance but not much covariance in prey abundances, and provided that predators forage non-randomly, congregating in the high abundance patches.