There are limits to the growth of populations
An argument from basic principles suggests that the answer to the question we just posed is no. Physicists estimate that the known universe contains a total of 1080 atoms.
Yet if favorable conditions persisted for long enough, allowing λ to remain greater than 1, even populations of relatively slowly growing species would eventually increase to more than 1080 individuals. For example, based on Asarum,s growth rate of λ = 1.01 in young forests, a population that began with 2 plants would have more than 1082 plants after 19,000 years. For an extremely rapidly growing species such as E. coli, the numbers are even more absurd: it would take only 6 days for a population that began with a single bacterium to exceed 1080 individuals.No population could ever come close to having 1080 individuals, because there would be no atoms with which to construct their bodies. Thus, exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. While this is an extreme example (because other difficulties would be encountered long before there was a shortage of atoms), it illustrates a fundamental point: there are limits to population growth, which cause it to slow and eventually stop. We'll look at some of those limits in the following section.
More on the topic There are limits to the growth of populations:
- There are limits to the growth of populations
- LIMITS TO GROWTH
- CARRYING CAPACITY
- Some populations exhibit logistic growth, a pattern in which abundance increases rapidly at first and then stabilizes at a population size known as the carrying capacity, the maximum population size that canbe supported indefinitely by the environment
- Population Dynamics
- Ethological structure of populations
- Human Population Growth: A Case Study
- Density-dependent factors regulate population size
- Cities and growth
- Density-independent factors can determine population size
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