Competitive Exclusion Principle Revised by Noise

A fundamental tenet in theoretical ecology is the competitive exclusion principle. Two competitive species for a limited resource cannot coexist and thus one of the species will be driven to extinction. However, we show that noise can revise this principle in a resonance-like manner, which makes coherence resonance in the system. Our obtained results well enrich the findings in the interaction of populations in ecosystems, which may explain some filed observations in the real world.