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Several years ago this journal published, only months apart, two articles seemingly in total disagreement as to the importance of interspecific competition in nature. On one side, Wiens (1977) argued that substantial com petition between many species is intermittent, perhaps even rare, and that its importance as an agent of natural selection may therefore be minimal. On the other, Dia mond (1978) argued that competition is often a major driving force of natural selection, that Darwin saw this, and that his forgotten wisdom was only now being rediscovered. Scientists who work on particular organ isms are prone to generalize from them, and Wiens and Diamond explicitly supported? and indeed have con tinued to support? their opposing views with data from their own work. Yet both study birds! Here is an example of the kind of controversy about how the world works that makes contemporary ecology simultaneously …