y'all know what they are but i'll briefly summarize:
factor which limits the population of a particular group. example: deer population gets too big. deer start starving for lack of food. deer population goes down. (starvation being the biological limiting factor).
OK! that being said, what do y'all think are *our* biological limiting factors? it's a bit of an ominous question (6 billion and growing).
factor which limits the population of a particular group. example: deer population gets too big. deer start starving for lack of food. deer population goes down. (starvation being the biological limiting factor).
OK! that being said, what do y'all think are *our* biological limiting factors? it's a bit of an ominous question (6 billion and growing).
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Seattle
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Mon, July 19, 2004 - 9:01 AMour own egos for one. -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Tue, July 20, 2004 - 2:03 AMwhat??!! don't stop there with the teaser! what do you mean, 'egos' (??) -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Tue, July 20, 2004 - 2:05 AMok, i'll start with a couple that i think are obvious. famine and war. true, these two 'horseman' have always plagued mankind but they become especially acute as our populations increase.
same thing is seen in nature with starvation and territorial aggression--although their not altogether manifested in the same way. -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Tue, July 20, 2004 - 2:05 AMam i out on a limb here? or taking crazy pills? -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Wed, July 21, 2004 - 7:56 AMfamine, plague, and war
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Sun, November 19, 2006 - 12:35 PMSometimes we have to distinguish between the actual cause of death and the conditions that led to certain death. For instance, "starvation" may be a cause, but what if a weakened deer were taken down by a cougar? Or if it succumbed to disease in its weakened state? In any case, we could blame lack of food.
For humans, we could look at lack of arable land or of fresh water supplies. But we waste much of our natural resource base, by polluting it, eroding it, or simply using it inefficiently.
I think in the long run our main problem will be inequality of resource use. Maybe that's what the "egos" comment means. -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Fri, October 26, 2007 - 10:20 AM
instead of egos i prefer to use the word "hubris". humans are just dumb animals that think they're in control when in actuality the universe and all its interacting systems are way too complex to actually grasp in a few generations. which falls in line perfectly with the cockroach anthropologists idea. who or what ever evolves after our inevitable extinction, they'll just go ahead and repeat all of the mistakes of an over-bloated cognitive intelligence.
intelligence is completely overrated as is anthropocentricity. isn't that why we studied zoology in the first place, because we had an inkling that other animals might be way cooler?
anyway, i think we've already lived way beyond our planet's current carrying capacity because of fossil fuels. and i may be succumbing to my own intellectual hubris here(as if I could actually comprehend all the factors at play to know what's really going on) but I suspect we'll starve to death or toxify ourselves to death.
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Sat, July 31, 2004 - 3:58 PM
The lemming effect.
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Wed, December 8, 2004 - 6:05 PMoverpopulation. earth would eventually reach its maximun carrying capacity and there would not be enough resources for human subsistence. -
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Re: Biological Limiting Factors
Tue, December 14, 2004 - 12:11 AMabsolutely. but i don't think we'll ever reach maximum capacity. i think we'll nuke ourselves before that happens.
then, in a billion years when cockroaches evolve into anthropomorphic creatures with speech, they'll have little cockroach anthropologists who try to figure out the mystery as to why the strange, apelike creatures who lacked antennas disappeared so many billions of years previously.
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