exploitative

comparative more exploitative · superlative most exploitative

1. In the nature of exploitation; acting to exploit someone or something

   We are protesting the company's exploitative policies.

2. broadlyOf or relating to exploitation.

   Carey McWilliams offers an exploitative theory to explain anti-Semitism.¹⁸ Social exclusion of Jews, he points out, commenced in the 1870’s just when huge fortunes were being made in industry and in railroading.

   1954, Gordon Willard Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Basic Books, published 1979, →ISBN, page 233

3. biologyWherein one organism reduces a resource to the point of affecting other organisms.

   In this model, because competition among consumers is merely exploitative, the consumer species do not directly influence each other's fitness. […] only through their effect on resource abundance, y.

   2005, Thomas L. Vincent, Joel Steven Brown, Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 98

   2 more examples

   The ways in which tadpoles inhibit each other’s growth have been of particular interest since Richards (1958) and Rose (1960) first indicated that interference as well as exploitative mechanisms may be involved.

   1996, Trevor John Clark Beebee, Ecology and Conservation of Amphibians, Chapman & Hall, published 1997, →ISBN, page 111

   This competition may be intra- or interspecific and may take the form of exploitative or interference competition. In exploitative competition, the consumption of a prey item by one individual removes it from possible consumption by another.

   2004, Michael R. Heithaus, “Predator–Prey Interactions”, chapter 17 of Jeffrey C. Carrier et al. (editors), Biology of Sharks and their Relatives, CRC Press, page 501