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Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.
He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.
But new research identifies the availability of "living space", rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.
Findings question the old adage of "nature red in tooth and claw".
The study conducted by PhD student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol is published in Biology Letters.
The research team used fossils to study evolutionary patterns over 400 million years of history.
Focusing on land animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - the scientists showed that the amount of biodiversity closely matched the availability of "living space" through time.
Living space - more formally known as the "ecological niche concept" by biologists - refers to the particular requirements of an organism to thrive. It includes factors like the availability of food and a favourable habitat.