Population Balance Review
1. State the four principles of ecosystem sustainability
2. What factors contribute to biotic potential and environmental resistance?
3. How do biotic potential and environmental resistance interact to control the size of a population? Which tends to remain the same and which controls a population's size?
4. It is seldom possible to count all the individuals in a natural population. How can a biologist study population densities without such data?
5. How can the density of a population affect the extent to which an environmental factor may affect that population?
6. Give two factors that would act density-dependently on a mouse population and two that would act density-independently.
7. What is the difference between reproduction and recruitment?
8. Differentiate between critical number and carrying capacity.
9. How are herbivore and carnivore populations in nature generally controlled?
10. What problems may occur when a species is introduced into an ecosystem in which they do not belong? What is the basic explanation for why these problems occur?
11. Describe the characteristic shape of a graph that represents the growth of a "new" population living in a favourable environment.
12. Describe the characteristic shape of a graph that represents the changes in a well-established population under natural conditions.
13. What is meant by territoriality and how does it help control certain populations in nature?
14. What are two basic population growth curves? What are the causes and consequences of each?
15. How can we calculate the rate at which a population is increasing or decreasing?
16. Define the terms natality, mortality, immigration, and emigration.
17. Do we humans need to control our population? Why or why not?
18. Why do the concepts of biotic potential and environmental resistance not apply to humans?
19. What type of growth pattern has the human population followed? What are the future implications?
20. Why does the concept of carrying capacity not apply easily to the human population?
21. Are there any indications that the human population may already have exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity? if so, what are they?
22. How has the growing human population affected the carrying capacity for some other species?