AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



This book is the outcome of a series of experimental investigations 

 upon which I have been engaged for several years past. In these 

 experiments an attempt was made to make use of all the advantages 

 of the controlled study of the struggle for existence in the laboratory 

 with various organisms low in the evolutionary scale. It became 

 evident that the processes of competition between different species 

 of protozoa and yeast cells are sometimes subject to perfectly definite 

 quantitative laws. But it has also been found that these processes 

 are extremely complicated and that their trend often do not harmo- 

 nize with the predictions of the relatively simple mathematical theory. 

 There is also a continued need for attack upon the problems of the 

 struggle for existence along the lines of experimental physiology and 

 biology, even though the results obtained cannot yet be adequately 

 expressed in mathematical terminology. 



I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor W. W. Alpatov 

 for interest in the experimental investigations and for valuable sugges- 

 tions. To Professor Raymond Pearl I am deeply indebted for great 

 assistance in the publication of this book, without which it could 

 never have appeared before the American reader. I am also grate- 

 ful to the Editors of The Journal of Experimental Biology and Archiv 

 fur Protistenkunde for permission to use material previously published 

 in these periodicals. 



G. F. Gause. 

 Laboratory of Ecology, 

 Zoological Institute, 

 University of Moscow, 



Malaia Bronnaia 12, Kv. S3. 

 November, 1984 



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