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The world is full of creatures that are extremely competitive, sometimes even aggressive, and those that are laid-back and happy to let the competitive ones face off for resources. The latter will just take what’s left over -- and sometimes those animals happily thrive.

A group of European scientists, using computer modeling, have worked out the dynamics of competition within a species and shown how it often ebbs and flows -- and can sometimes lead to extinction.

Those animals without a competitive instinct often make better use of resources than do the competitive ones, the scientists reported in Nature Communications. But, the drive for competitive behavior often is triggered by the females of the species preferring the alpha male approach, even to the point of ignoring males that would make better mates. Therein, the scientists found, lies danger.

While the study, by Sebastian Baldauf, of the Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at the University of Bonn, Franjo Weissing of the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and Leif Engqvist at the Abteilung Evolutionsbiologie at the University of Bielefeld in Germany dealt with non-humans, much of it applies.