Question

What are Limiting and Regulating Factors? What are density-dependent and density-independent rates of change? Give examples for all.

Answer 1

A limiting factor is a resource or environmental condition which limits the growth, distribution or abundance of an organism or population within an ecosystem.

Acc to leibeg law of minimum limiting factor is " growth is not controlled by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource”.

Types of limiting factor :- a) density dependent factor

b) density independent factor

c) physical and biological limiting factor.

Examples resources such as food, light, shelter all are limiting factor for plants light is limiting factor for photosynthesis.

Regulating factor :- the factor which keep our population in equilibrium is known as regulating factor.

All regulating factors are density-dependent, meaning they keep populations at equilibrium by counteracting fluctuations in population size per unit area (or per unit volume for species living within three dimensional environments, such as water)

Example :-food supply If the population increases to a certain size, there will be less food for each organism. This will lead to fewer births (a decrease in fecundity) and more deaths, making a negative growth rate. As there are now fewer animals, the amount of food for each organism will increase, meaning the growth rate will become positive. This would lead to a large population size again, and the cycle would start over. Therefore, food is a regulating factor in this scenario, as food supply keeps the population at relative equilibrium.

DENSITY DEPENDENT AND DENSITY INDEPENDENT RATE OF EXCHANGE WITH EXAMPLES GIVEM BELOW :-

Density indepndent. :-factors affect per capita growth rate independent of population density.

Examples:-Density-independent limiting factors often take the form of natural disasters, severe weather, and pollution.as an example, let's consider a wildfire that breaks out in a forest where deer live. The fire will kill any unlucky deer that are present, regardless of population size