Abstract
The concept of niche involves two complementary aspects, one related to the hypervolume occupied by a species or a community in the ecological space (e.g. Hutchinson 1957, 1978; Feoli, Ganis and Woldu 1988) and the other related to the pattern of resources exploitation and competition (e.g. May 1975a, 1975b, Hulbert 1978, 1981; Pianka 1981; Maurer, 1982; Smith 1982; Giller 1984; Holt, 1987). Many niche overlap indices have been proposed and used by ecologists: some of them are frequently equated with the competition coefficient, others can be classified as distance measure (Levins 1968), association indices (Cody 1974), correlation coefficient (Pianka 1973), information measures (Horn 1966). The actual relationship between niche overlap and competition is not clear. Abrams (1980) specifies that mere overlap in resource use does not necessarily lead to competition and vice versa the intensity of competition cannot be related to the degree of niche overlap.
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