Principles of competitive exclusion for discrete populations with reproducing juveniles and adults Original Research Article

We invent notions of dominance and weak dominance for discrete multi-species systems with competing juveniles and adults. In this model, both the juveniles and adults are allowed to reproduce. We prove that, a dominant species drives the dominated species to extinction. In discrete juvenile-adult systems that do not allow juveniles to reproduce, it is known that weak dominance is equivalent to dominance, provided all the growth functions are exponentials. We show that if juveniles are allowed to reproduce, then a weakly dominant species could be driven to extinction. It all the growth functions are exponential functions, we obtain sufficient conditions that guarantee the equivalence of weak dominance and dominance.