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What happens during the three stages of logistic population growth?
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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, logistic population growth is characterized by an S-shaped curve that reflects how environmental factors, such as resource availability, eventually limit population expansion. This process occurs in three distinct stages:123
- Initial Growth Stage: The population begins with a period of slow-to-rapid growth, often represented by a rising exponential curve as the population starts to increase in a new environment.23
- Inflection Stage: This stage is marked by a midpoint where the growth rate reaches its peak. At this point, the positive curvature of the exponential growth inflects to a negative curvature, signaling that the rate of increase is beginning to slow down as competition for resources intensifies.23
- Stabilization Stage: In the final stage, growth slows significantly as the population approaches the environment's carrying capacity (K). The growth rate eventually levels off near zero, and the population size stabilizes because the environment can no longer support further expansion due to limited resources, increased predation, or disease.123