Population Growth and Regulation Flashcards
7 cards from real Ecology practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Population Growth and Regulation flashcards as text
Which of the following would shift a population's growth curve from logistic to exponential?
Answer: Removing all density-dependent regulation
Logistic growth requires density-dependent limits; eliminating these regulatory feedbacks produces unrestricted exponential growth regardless of K.
In mark-recapture population estimation, the Lincoln-Petersen method assumes that:
Answer: Marked individuals mix randomly and survival does not differ between marked and unmarked
The Lincoln-Petersen estimator requires random mixing of marked individuals and equal catchability (no mark-induced mortality or avoidance) to be unbiased.
Source-sink dynamics in a landscape occur when:
Answer: High-quality patches export individuals that subsidize populations in low-quality patches
Source habitats produce a surplus of individuals (λ > 1) that disperse into sink habitats (λ < 1) where local births alone cannot sustain the population.
A life table shows that lx drops steeply in the first week of life then levels off. This pattern corresponds to which survivorship curve?
Answer: Type III — high early mortality, low mortality thereafter
Type III survivorship curves, typical of many invertebrates and fish, show most deaths occurring very early in life with survivors having much better prospects.
Which of the following represents an inverse density dependence (Allee effect) scenario?
Answer: Per capita birth rate increases as population density increases from very low levels
An Allee effect is the inverse of typical density dependence — per capita fitness or birth rate initially rises with density before eventually declining at higher densities.
Which statistical model is most appropriate for analyzing time-series data of population counts to estimate r and detect density dependence?
Answer: Autoregressive state-space model accounting for observation error
State-space models separate process stochasticity from observation error, making them the standard approach for estimating population growth parameters from count data.
The minimum viable population (MVP) concept is used primarily to:
Answer: Estimate the smallest population size with a high probability of persisting for a specified time
MVP analysis, often using population viability analysis (PVA), estimates the population size below which extinction risk within a given timeframe becomes unacceptably high.