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Limited Population Growth

Part 6: Analysis and Summary

  1. What is our theoretical model for limited population growth? How does it reflect "natural" growth when the population is small? How is the effect of maximum capacity of the environment reflected in the model?

  2. How is the relationship among slope, rise, and run used to generate points on the graph of population as a function of time? How is "run" determined? How are the necessary "slopes" calculated? Once you have a "slope" and a "run," how do you calculate "rise" -- and what do you do with it?

  3. Describe in words the general shapes of the population and growth rate curves generated by this model.

  4. What happens to the population model as we take more and more time steps in the same 100-day time interval? Which of our models do you think most accurately represents a continuously growing population? Why?

  5. Estimate the time at which the fruit fly population is growing most rapidly, and estimate the population at that time. Include some numerical data to explain why you have identified a particular time as the time of most rapid growth.
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Last modified: September 23, 1997