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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 ...
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} .
A low level of one factor can sometimes be partially compensated for by appropriate levels of other factors. In case of chemical reactions it is known as law of limiting factor. A corollary to this is that two factors may work synergistically (e.g. 1 + 1 = 5), to make a habitat favorable or unfavorable. Geographic distribution of sugar maple.
Blackman proposed the law of limiting factors in 1905. According to this law, when a process depends on a number of factors, its rate is limited by the pace of the slowest factor. Blackman's law is illustrated by concentration as a limiting factor in the rate of oxygen production in photosynthesis:
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 ...
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."
Kozłowski and Konarzewski have argued against attempts to explain Kleiber's law via any sort of limiting factor because metabolic rates vary by factors of 4-5 between rest and activity. Hence, any limits that affect the scaling of the basal metabolic rate would make elevated metabolism — and hence all animal activity — impossible. [22]
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 ]