Interesting stuff.
So say you had only one limited food source in a patch, like iron maybe. Are you saying (assuming no predation) that even if you started with 100 species all but one would go extinct? And even if that one splits one half will just die off? I’m not sure that’s particularly ideal.
On the wikipedia page you linked to it says:
Competitive exclusion is predicted by mathematical and theoretical models such as the Lotka-Volterra models of competition. However, for poorly understood reasons, competitive exclusion is rarely observed in natural ecosystems, and many biological communities appear to violate Gause’s law. The best-known example is the so-called “paradox of the plankton”.[7] All plankton species live on a very limited number of resources, primarily solar energy and minerals dissolved in the water. According to the competitive exclusion principle, only a small number of plankton species should be able to coexist on these resources. Nevertheless, large numbers of plankton species coexist within small regions of open sea.
I imagine that we would want a bunch of different plankton-like species right all coexisting?