1. Location, location, location: as in real estate, as in life. I often make the
ID: 288972 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Location, location, location: as in real estate, as in life. I often make the observation that if you look at a large enough scale, almost all organisms show a clumped or aggregated distribution because they associate with habitat requirements and habitats aren’t uniform. This is easy to visualize for something like a lion (“I go where there are prey and no fences”), but not so easy for marine organisms. What factors influence the distribution of macro scale (nonmicroscopic) organisms in the oceans?
2. Do you think the carrying capacity for a species is a constant, and why or why not? And to carry this question one (important) step further, is the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans constant and what, in your opinion, sets this limit?
3. Populations can be driven to extinction by over-population and under-population. What are they, and how do they result in extinction of a population?
Explanation / Answer
1- Macro scale organisms like phytoplankton and zooplankton have a very short lifespan. Their distribution is affected by the environmental changes, changes in ocean water temperature, the climate suitable for spawning, amount of spawned population and the larval survival.
2. Carrying capacity of an organism is defined as the amount of its population which can be sustained by the environment without any deficiency in environmental resources. The carrying capacity of a species varies at different places and changes annually with an increase in food resources, effect of climate etc. The carrying capacity for humans isn't constant since there has been a change of lifestyle from survival type to agricultural and that of coexistence. Though fast depleting resources may pose to be a limitation for the carrying capacity of humans in which case they may be required to lower their standards of living.
3- Overpopulation leads to increase in the number of species, greater than the environment could carry. it leads to a reduction in the availability of food, self-competition, spreading of diseases thus slowly leading to their extinction.
Underpopulation refers to a decline in normal population due to decreases fertility and birth rates.As a result, it leads to increase in the cause of diseases and a growth in mortality rate due to fertility problems or other outward causes like emmigration or environmental effects.
Thus the idea of an optimum population is most accepted.
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