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How do fertility and fecundity differ in population ecology?

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Common wildebeest — population ecology A herd of common wildebeest (*Connochaetes taurinus*) migrating across a dusty savanna in Africa. The animal is a keystone species (i.e., a species with a disproportionately large effect on its biological community) in plains and acacia savanna ecosystems from southeastern Africa to central Kenya.

In population ecology, while the terms fertility and fecundity are sometimes used interchangeably in casual conversation, they represent distinct concepts regarding reproductive potential and output.

Fecundity refers to the physiological capacity of an organism to produce offspring. In ecological studies, it is often measured by the number of eggs or young produced by an individual or a population. High fecundity is frequently observed in species that provide little to no parental care, where producing a vast number of offspring is a strategy to ensure that at least a few survive despite high mortality rates.1
Fertility, in contrast, typically refers to the actual reproductive performance or the realized number of viable offspring produced. In human demography, for example, it is measured by metrics such as the total fertility rate, which estimates the average number of children a woman is likely to have during her reproductive years.2

Essentially, fecundity represents the biological potential for reproduction, whereas fertility measures the actual outcome of that potential within a population.21