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Carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as the environment 's maximal load, [clarification needed] which in population ...
Overshoot (population) In environmental science, a population "overshoots" its local carrying capacity — the capacity of the biome to feed and sustain that population — when that population has not only begun to outstrip its food supply in excess of regeneration, but actually shot past that point, setting up a potentially catastrophic crash ...
Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has a history of more than 220 years, [1] although over the last century the scope of mathematical biology has greatly expanded. [citation needed] The beginning of population dynamics is widely regarded as the work of Malthus, formulated as the ...
The definition of a competitive Lotka–Volterra system assumes that all values in the interaction matrix are positive or 0 (α ij ≥ 0 for all i, j). If it is also assumed that the population of any species will increase in the absence of competition unless the population is already at the carrying capacity ( r i > 0 for all i ), then some ...
Overpopulation. Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species ' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migration, leading to an overabundant species and other animals in the ecosystem ...
Intraspecific competition is an interaction in population ecology, whereby members of the same species compete for limited resources. This leads to a reduction in fitness for both individuals, but the more fit individual survives and is able to reproduce. [1] By contrast, interspecific competition occurs when members of different species ...
Global biocapacity' is a term sometimes used to describe the total capacity of an ecosystem to support various continuous activity and changes. When the ecological footprint of a population exceeds the biocapacity of the environment it lives in, this is called an 'biocapacity deficit'. Such a deficit comes from three sources: overusing one's ...
r. /. K. selection theory. A North Atlantic right whale with solitary calf. Whale reproduction follows a K -selection strategy, with few offspring, long gestation, long parental care, and a long period until sexual maturity. In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between ...