Name: __________________________________________________________________ Pd: _____ Population Ecology Directions: Answer the questions provided as you read and highlight key concepts throughout the article. Let’s imagine. . . there’s a virus outbreak that occurs all across the world. The only way to survive the virus is to distance yourself from others, make sure you have enough food and water, and most importantly. . . stock up on toilet paper! For small towns, this is fairly simple to do. There aren’t a lot of people in the area so social distancing is easy and there is enough food, water, and toilet paper to go around. Larger cities, however, are a different story! The number of people in a given area is so large that it’s much more difficult to distance yourself from others. All of these people in close contact allow the virus to spread much more easily. There simply isn’t enough toilet paper for everyone in the city so competition plays a huge factor in the survival of these individuals. There are many factors that go into how much a population of organisms can grow. In a perfect world, there would be enough food, shelter, and resources for populations to infinitely flourish. This type of population growth is called ​exponential growth​. Exponential growth is represented by a “​J curve​” graph. All populations start out by growing exponentially because there are a small number of organisms and a large abundance of resources. But a population cannot continue this growth indefinitely because, in nature, resources are limited. More organisms in a population mean more resources are needed to support that population. Eventually, those resources run out. ​Logistic growth occurs when a population’s growth slows or stops following a period of exponential growth. Logistic growth is represented by an “​S curve​” graph. The maximum number of individuals in a population that can be sustained by an environment is called the population’s ​carrying capacity​. There are many factors in an environment that influence t