Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Limiting factors may be physical or biological. [4]: 417, 8 Limiting factors are not limited to the condition of the species. Some factors may be increased or reduced based on circumstances. An example of a limiting factor is sunlight in the rain forest, where growth is limited to all plants on the forest floor unless more light becomes ...
In most cases combinations of factors are responsible for limiting the geographic range edge of species. Abiotic and biotic factors may work together in determining the range of a species. An example might be some obligate seeder plants where the distribution is limited by the presence of wildfires, which are needed to allow their seed bank to ...
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} .
Biological constraints are factors which make populations resistant to evolutionary change. One proposed definition of constraint is "A property of a trait that, although possibly adaptive in the environment in which it originally evolved, acts to place limits on the production of new phenotypic variants."
An example of direct competition. 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 ]
Coexistence theory attempts to explain the paradox of the plankton-- how can ecologically similar species coexist without competitively excluding each other?. Coexistence theory is a framework to understand how competitor traits can maintain species diversity and stave-off competitive exclusion even among similar species living in ecologically similar environments.
An ideal examples of r-selected groups are algae. Based on the contradictory characteristics of both of these examples, areas of occasional disturbance allow both r and K species to benefit by residing in the same area. The ecological effect on species relationships is therefore supported by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis.
The best-known example is the so-called "paradox of the plankton". [6] All plankton species live on a very limited number of resources, primarily solar energy and minerals dissolved in the water. According to the competitive exclusion principle, only a small number of plankton species should be able to coexist on these resources.