Limited Population Growth
Part 6: Analysis
and Summary
- What is our theoretical
model for limited population growth? How does it reflect "natural"
growth when the population is small? How is the effect of maximum capacity
of the environment reflected in the model?
- How is the relationship
among slope, rise, and run used to generate points on the graph of population
as a function of time? How is "run" determined? How are the necessary
"slopes" calculated? Once you have a "slope" and a
"run," how do you calculate "rise" -- and what do you
do with it?
- Describe in words the general
shapes of the population and growth rate curves generated by this model.
- What happens to the population
model as we take more and more time steps in the same 100-day time interval?
Which of our models do you think most accurately represents a continuously
growing population? Why?
- Estimate the time
at which the fruit fly population is growing most rapidly, and estimate
the population at that time. Include some numerical data to explain
why you have identified a particular time as the time of most rapid growth.
Send comments to the
authors <modules at math.duke.edu>
Last modified: September
23, 1997