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Limiting factor. A limiting factor is a variable of a system that causes a noticeable change in output or another measure of a type of system. The limiting factor is in a pyramid shape of organisms going up from the producers to consumers and so on. A factor not limiting over a certain domain of starting conditions may yet be limiting over ...
Liebig's law states that growth only occurs at the rate permitted by the most limiting factor. [ 2 ] For instance, in the equation below, the growth of population O {\displaystyle O} is a function of the minimum of three Michaelis-Menten terms representing limitation by factors I {\displaystyle I} , N {\displaystyle N} and P {\displaystyle P} .
Ecological niche. The flightless dung beetle occupies an ecological niche: exploiting animal droppings as a food source. In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. [1][2] It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for example, by growing when ...
Limiting similarity (informally "limsim") is a concept in theoretical ecology and community ecology that proposes the existence of a maximum level of niche overlap between two given species that will allow continued coexistence. This concept is a corollary of the competitive exclusion principle, which states that, controlling for all else, two ...
Carrying capacity is applied to the maximum population an environment can support in ecology, agriculture and fisheries. The term carrying capacity has been applied to a few different processes in the past before finally being applied to population limits in the 1950s. [1] The notion of carrying capacity for humans is covered by the notion of ...
Marginal distribution (biology) The geographical limits to the distribution of a species are determined by biotic or abiotic factors. Core populations are those occurring within the centre of the range, and marginal populations (also called peripheral populations) are found at the boundary of the range. The inability of a species to expand its ...
The factors limiting primary production in the ocean are also very different from those on land. The availability of water, obviously, is not an issue (though its salinity can be). Similarly, temperature, while affecting metabolic rates (see Q 10 ), ranges less widely in the ocean than on land because the heat capacity of seawater buffers ...
Realized niche width is a phrase relating to ecology, is defined by the actual space that an organism inhabits and the resources it can access as a result of limiting pressures from other species (e.g. superior competitors). An organism's ecological niche is determined by the biotic and abiotic factors that make up that specific ecosystem that ...