Search Results

This chapter examines the implications of climate change for population dynamics and stability. Population dynamics, or the variation in abundance of a population through time, can be decomposed into two components: density-dependent and density-independent processes. Density-dependent processes are those involving competitive interactions among members of the same species within the same population that influence survival and reproduction. Density-independent processes are those that do not involve interactions with other members of the same species in the same population but rather owe to external factors such as environmental variation. It is this latter set of processes that has relevance to climate change, though density dependence certainly has a role to play in the response of populations to climate change.

This chapter examines competitive interactions in California grasslands, first presenting the major components of grassland communities, including descriptions of their phenology and growth strategies. It then describes how various life-history characteristics affect growth and survival and the interactions between species. Finally, the chapter considers how management strategies can be used to alter competitive interactions to favor native species, including grazing regimes and seed addition.

Chapter 4 examines competition between foreign multinationals and local firms, which were examined independently in the preceding two chapters. Until the early 1990s, multinational firms entered high-end markets, while local companies maintained the low end of the market, with little competition between the two. Between 1998 and 2009, some multinationals expanded Chinese operations by localizing production. At the same time, several local firms emerged as serious competitors against multinational competitors. This chapter confirms that the greater relative competitive advantage of multinational firms vis-à-vis local firms corresponds to higher technological complexity and marketing knowhow. For instance, foreign firms’ market share is the highest when marketing knowhow and technological complexity are important. Weak intellectual property rights protection in China, however, poses a great threat to foreign firms. This chapter begins with a case study of China’s telecom industry, which demonstrates a drastic contrast between foreign and local firms by sub-industry.

Cyberspace is an initiative persistent environment of opportunity and vulnerability wherein States face a structural imperative to persist in seizing and maintaining the initiative to set favorable security conditions in and through cyberspace. The dominant State security-seeking behavior is exploitation below the level of armed conflict, primarily manifesting in the cyber fait accompli—a limited unilateral gain that is retained when the target is unaware of the loss or is unable or unwilling to respond. A less frequent behavior is direct cyber engagement, a mutually dependent competition for control of key cyberspace terrain, whose prevalence may increase with advances in artificial intelligence. States are strategically incentivized in cyberspace to not breach the armed-attack equivalent ceiling. This produces a dynamic of competitive interaction, not escalation, and the inter-State phenomenon of cyber agreed competition, a tacitly bounded strategic competitive space inclusive of operational restraint and exclusive of operations causing armed-attack equivalent effects.

This chapter examines the facilitative and competitive interactions in giant kelp communities. Broadly defined, facilitation denotes positive interactions between species where at least one species benefits and no harm is done to the other. The clearest examples of facilitation in giant kelp forests are the numerous invertebrates that use the fronds and holdfasts of giant kelp as a place to live, a refuge from predators, and perhaps an enhanced food supply in the form of plankton and the small epiphytes on fronds or detritus in holdfasts. On the other hand, competition, a negative interaction, occurs within and between species when individuals require the same resource that is insufficient for all and therefore compromises growth, reproduction, and survival. Within kelp forest patches, the array of species may be partially dictated by intraspecific competition within kelp species. The reduction in understory algae beneath thick canopies suggests that the giant kelp outcompete understory species for light.

This chapter examines the diet and foraging behavior of treeshrews in Malaysia, explaining that the diet of treeshrews was from earliest reports correctly known to consist of fruit and insects. It describes the nature of fruit- and insect-eating by treeshrews, along with the behavioral characteristics of foraging for each food type, and analyzes the possible relation between diet and morphology. The chapter evaluates the possible competitive interactions that might occur for different food types, both among treeshrew species and among treeshrews and other vertebrates in their community.

This chapter focuses on government policies on computer software. It examines how a government can develop a framework that facilitates the competitive interactions between open source and proprietary software in a manner that boosts efficiency and innovation. It analyzes arguments for why the government should support open source software and suggests that when it comes to regulation, governments should encourage vigorous competition between open and proprietary software. This chapter also argues that the government should play a lead role in providing information about the features of different types of software to consumers.

A multi-method approach comprising quantitative analysis, case studies, unsealed criminal indictments, open source government reporting, and cyber security industry surveys, experiments, and trend reports supports hypotheses derived from cyber persistence theory. States have built cyber infrastructure and employed it to act persistently in and through cyberspace. Exploitation through cyber faits accomplis is the dominant behavior, with illustrative case studies of China’s cyber-enabled intellectual property theft and North Korea’s sanctions circumvention demonstrating the independent strategic significance of this behavior. Direct cyber engagement outside of armed conflict is rare, but not absent. Cyber incidents between States, including rival dyads, display no escalation dynamics. Concerns that open source materials may not be representative of proprietary and classified data are allayed with two counterfactuals that demonstrate the value of cyber persistence theory prescriptions no matter the representativeness of publicly available data.