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Carrying capacity is a commonly used concept for biologists when trying to better understand biological populations and the factors which affect them. [1] When addressing biological populations, carrying capacity can be seen as a stable dynamic equilibrium, taking into account extinction and colonization rates. [ 16 ]
There also exists density-independent inhibition, where other factors such as weather or environmental conditions and disturbances may affect a population's carrying capacity. [citation needed] An example of a density-dependent variable is crowding and competition.
Bacterial growth is proliferation of bacterium into two daughter cells, in a process called binary fission. Providing no mutation event occurs, the resulting daughter cells are genetically identical to the original cell. Hence, bacterial growth occurs. Both daughter cells from the division do not necessarily survive.
As resources become more limited, the growth rate tapers off, and eventually, once growth rates are at the carrying capacity of the environment, the population size will taper off. [6] This S-shaped curve observed in logistic growth is a more accurate model than exponential growth for observing real-life population growth of organisms.
If bacterial populations could grow indefinitely (which they do not) then the number of bacteria in each species would approach infinity (∞). However, the percentage of G. stearothermophilus bacteria out of all the bacteria would approach 100% whilst the percentage of E. coli and N. meningitidis combined out of all the bacteria would approach 0%.
The standard logistic function is the logistic function with parameters =, =, =, which yields = + = + = / / + /.In practice, due to the nature of the exponential function, it is often sufficient to compute the standard logistic function for over a small range of real numbers, such as a range contained in [−6, +6], as it quickly converges very close to its saturation values of 0 and 1.
Competition is one of many interacting biotic and abiotic factors that affect community structure, species diversity, and population dynamics (shifts in a population over time). [3] There are three major mechanisms of competition: interference, exploitation, and apparent competition (in order from most direct to least direct).
Source–sink dynamics is a theoretical model used by ecologists to describe how variation in habitat quality may affect the population growth or decline of organisms.. Since quality is likely to vary among patches of habitat, it is important to consider how a low quality patch might affect a population.