CARRYING CAPACITY AND LIMITING FACTORS

Limiting Factors- Examples | Carrying Capacity

Limiting Factor - any abiotic or biotic factor that restricts the numbers, reproduction, or distribution of organisms

• Density Dependent: depends on the number of organisms in a population

  • Usually biotic factors like predation, disease, competition, and parasites

• Density Independent factors: does not depend on the number of organisms in a population

  • Usually abiotic and can include weather events

Range of Tolerance - upper and lower limits of an environmental factor in which an organism can survive

EX: Trout live in cool, coastal rivers and streams with an ideal temperature range between 13 and 21 degrees Celsius, but can survive in a range between 9 and 25 degrees Celsius

Tolerance - the ability of any organism to survive when subjected to abiotic or biotic factors

Carrying Capacity - the maximum number of individuals in a species that an environment can support for the long term

• Can be limited due to availability of living and nonliving resources, predation, competition, and disease

• Environments and resources are finite and this means that populations can only grow to a point that the environment can sustain

• If a population exceeds the carrying capacity, deaths will outnumber births because there are not enough resources available to support all individuals