5. If you found a population growing exponentially, what could you say
about the conditions it was growing under?
| a) resources are unlimited | |
b) resources are limited |
| c) predators could be at work | |
d) density-independent factors could be at work |
You said that if a population was growing exponentially, the conditions it was growing under
are
(b) limited resources
no, if resources were limited, R0 would get smaller at high N because
individual birth rates would be higher and/or death rates higher.
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You said that if a population was growing exponentially, the conditions it was growing under
are
(c) predators could be at work.
no, if there were predators, individual death rates would almost certainly be higher when the
prey were more common, so R0 would get smaller as N increased.
Click here to return to question 5.
You said that if a population was growing exponentially, the conditions it was growing under
are
(d) density-independent factors could be at work
Well . . . almost. Density-independent environmental factors (like floods, fires,
storms, freezes) tend to stop exponential growth (so the population would
grow exponentially between storms, but then be knocked back to a lower level.). Try again.
