For now this is a collection of ideas about how the concept of competition is used in ecology and evolution.
For me, the possibility that competition is an over-used assumption in ecology and evolution really shines through with ideas like "the ghost of competition past" (Connell 1980). This idea says that even if we don't see evidence of competition between species today, certainly their ecologies and evolutions were driven by competition in the past. Thus the title "the ghost of Malthus past" is a sassy response to that idea: it was not past competition affecting these species, it was the ghost of Malthus and his ideas haunting us today, making us western-trained scientists obsessed with seeing competition everywhere.
Barton and Wong (2019) Plant competition as a mechanism of invasion on islands: Revisiting the conclusions of Kuebbing and Nuñez (2016)
Are islands invaded because island plants are poor competitors? No. They re-analyze Kuebbing and Nuñez (2016).
Kuebbing and Nuñez (2016) Invasive non-native plants have a greater effect on neighbouring natives than other non-natives
They look at "neighbor effects." Need more clarity on what that is