English

Adjective

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. (more generally) Of or relating to exploitation.
   • 1954, Gordon Willard Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Basic Books (1979), ISBN 978-0-201-00179-2, page 233:

     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.

3. (ecology, of competition) Wherein one organism reduces a resource to the point of affecting other organisms.
   • 1996, Trevor John Clark Beebee, Ecology and Conservation of Amphibians, Chapman & Hall (1997), ISBN 978-0-412-62410-0, page 111:

     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.

   • 2004, Michael R. Heithaus, “Predator–Prey Interactions”, chapter 17 of Jeffrey C. Carrier et al. (editors), Biology of Sharks and their Relatives, CRC Press, ISBN 978-0-8493-1514-5, page 501:

     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.

   • 2005, Thomas L. Vincent, Joel Steven Brown, Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-84170-2, page 98:

     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.

Derived terms

• exploitatively

Synonyms

• exploitive