Week 10 Vocabulary Practice: Population Dynamics

• Maximum number of organisms that can live somewhere, based on the food, water, and free space.

• Biotic potential
• Carrying capacity
• Habitat suitability
• Population density

A factor that controls the growth of population.

• immigration
• education
• economic development
• limiting factor

• A population's per capita (per individual) growth rate stays the same regardless of population size, making the population grow faster and faster as it gets larger.

• It produces a J-shaped curve.

• biodiversity

• succession

• exponential growth

• logistic growth

• A population's per capita growth rate gets smaller and smaller as population size approaches a maximum imposed by limited resources in the environment.

• It produces an S-shaped curve.

• Linear growth
• growth rate

• Exponential growth
• Logistic growth

• Limiting factors that depend on population density, like

• competition, predation, parasitism, and disease.

• Density Independent Limiting Factor

• Density dependent Limiting Factor

• Limiting Factors that do not depend on population density.

• Examples are natural disasters and man-made disasters.

• Density Independent limiting Factor

• Density dependent limiting factor

An ecological succession where a newly formed area is inhabited for the first time by a group of species or a community.

• secondary succession
• tertiary succession
• quaternary succession
• primary succession

The re-establishment or re-colonization process of a full-fledged ecological community from the remnants of the soil after an ecological disturbance.

• Secondary succession

• Primary Succession

• ecological balance

• urbanization

An introduced, nonnative organism (disease, parasite, plant, or animal) that begins to spread or expand its range from the site of its original introduction and that has the potential to cause harm to the environment, the economy, or human health.

• Invasive species
• Alien species
• Exotic species
• endemic species

Species that are the first to colonize newly created environments or recently disturbed environments during the processes of primary succession. 

• early colonizers
• primary inhabitants
• initial pioneers
• pioneer species