Population Regulation Nutrients - The supply and/or availability of particular nutrients can be a major limiting factor in an ecosystem.

- The role of nutrients in regulating a populations size, density, and distribution was only indirectly assessed. o Regulatory effect of sodium on meadow voles, shows a substantial correlation between the level of sodium in the soil and population density G.D. Aumann and J.T. Emlen (1965), determined the casual relationships between sodium and volves by offering restricted and unrestricted sodium chloride diets to a laboratory colony of voles. They found out that the higer selection of sodium under crowding solutions was caused by a sodium deficiency in the animals. o Phosphorus on woodland herbs (Utrica dioica), and; C.D. Pigott and K.Taylor (1964, British ecologists. Showed that midsummer nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the aerial shoots of Urtica were about three times greated than in Mercuiallis perennis, that is commonly associated with it. They also found little different in the amount of either total or inorganic nitrogen in soils directly associated with these 2 perennials. o Nitrogen on insects. Nitrogen does not play the limiting role in nettle populations, it is a regulating factor in other populations. Mark McClure (1980) has shown that the amount of nitrogen in leaves significantly affect the population success of the elongate hemlock scale insect Fiorinio externa. He also found out that in some 14 coniferous species was the concentration of nitrogen in young foliage available to the nymphs during their development. Nymphs are rich source of nitrogen experienced less mortality and developed at a faster rate, and also produce more progeny. Moisture - Chemical interaction is a major factor in regulating population growth and distribution. - Physical factors that are characterized by gradations also play different roles per different species. o Drought and birds. Stiles (1992) observed in Carribean lowlands of Costa Rica observed that the normal period and degree of mortality that occurs during the season of flower scarcity in late OctoberNovember was markedly increased by a period of unusual drought in 197. It caused a severe flower shortage at the height of breeding season. George et al. (1992). A similar drought effect on 15 species of grassland birds in western North Dakota. The total density of grassland birds declined by 61% between June 1987 and June 1988. o Flooding and fish. At the opposite end of the moisture gradient is flooding. The behavior of fish in each situation should have evolved over time to enable survival under each kind of flooding.

Food The degree of availability and accessibility of food would seem, at face value, to b an obvious population regulation. Its absence can lead to intensified competition, including behavior, or to starvation; its presence could lead to the other extreme of substantial population growth.

Weather - While dramatic weather conditions such as hurricanes and tornados can decimate a population such events are not regulatory in an equilibrium- oriented sense. - However, periodic weather events associated with seasonal progression and involving changes in temperature and moisture may effectively regulate some populations.

Interspecific Relationship Symbiosis (Greek origins) means simply living together o Neutralism, no effect on each other. Competition may involve a mutual inhibition or an indirect effect in situations in which a common resource is in short supply. Parasitism and predation, one population is adversely affects the other by direct attack, parasite generally being smaller than their host and predators larger. Commensalism which literally means feeding at the table, one population is benefited while the other is not affected Protocooperation is a situation in which both population benefit but the relationship in not obligatory. Mutualism is a situation in which both benefit and neither can survive without the other.

Parasitism - Robert May (1983) made a useful distinction between parasites based on their population biology rather than their taxonomy: o Microparasites (viruses, bacteria, fungi), which have direct reproduction, usually at high rates within the host. o Macroparasites (helminthes, arthropods) have no direct reproduction within the host. - Parasites and adaption. o Parasitic infection appears to be more effective as regulatory agents among newly introduced species of plants and animals or, when parasites are introduced into new regions (May 1983). Well-adapted parasites are relatively harmless to their hosts, an advantage to both symbionts. o Adaption of parasites is increasingly evident in attempts to chemically control pests that transmit the parasite. o The most important resistant mechanisms enhance the capacity to metabolically detoxify the pesticide and to produce alterations in target sites that prevent pesticides from binding to them (Brattsten et al. 1986). Predation - The parasite and predator are benefited while the host and prey are adversely affected to greater or lesser degrees. o Environmental heterogeneity. Gauses experiments also point to the significance of heterogeneity in the environment as an important factor in population interaction. Welsh ecologist, P. van den Ende shown that even a seemingly homogenous environment contains sufficient heterogeneity to allow populations to persist with out-of-phase oscillatory patterns. o Effect of hunger. Hunger and food abundance constitute one such set of factors in the selection prey, feeding selectivity being inversely proportional to the state of hunger. o Effect of size. These large species are selectively fed on because they are more easily located. Both the density of large species and sizes of species constituting the zooplankton community fluctuate, however, as densities of their fish predators wax and wane. o Effect of spatial distribution o The indirect effect of disease. o Effect of latitude. Intensity of predation is regulated by a number of ecologists to be greater on populations of both plants and animals in lower latitudes, consistent with the tenet that biotic factors play a greater role in evolution in the tropics than do physical factor. o Effect of human predation. o Classical predator-prey theory. Results in oscillatory patterns shown by A.J. Lotka (1925) and V. Volterra (1928). Population patterns also depend on adaptive behavior.

A good preadtor, in the sense of being well adapted, would be like a good parasite, living off the interest or at least the expendable capital of a population. Ratio-dependent predator-prey theory. Lotka- Volterra equations has two major shortcomings. First, the model predicts that an enrichment of the system will cause increase in equilibrium density of the predator but not in that of the prey and will destabilize community equilibrium. Second, the model predicts there cannot be a situation of both a very low and a stable prey equilibrium density.

Concept of Niche - Niche, means that sum total of all the ecological requisites and activities of a species. o Eugene Odum, called its profession. o The term niche has been used in a variety of contexts: Including spatial (distribution, habitat, physical location in an ecosystem) Functional (trophic level, position in a food web) Behavioral (its way of life as a predator, competitor, etc) And, abstractly. (Niche as an abstract n-dimensional hypervolme, a concept developed by Yale ecologist, G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1965). Competition - If two different species population require a common resource, such as nutrient, space, light, or moisture, that is potentially limited and actually becomes so, they are said to be in competition for it. Under such conditions can they exist together or one displaces the other. - Interspecific competition plays a significant role in population regulation and in setting distributional limits, thus directly affecting the structure of biological communities, and perhaps in adaptive radiation. Resource Competition- the Competitive Exclusion Principle - Independent of each other, Lotka (1925) and Volterra (1928) developed mathematical formulations relating to competing populations that indicated that only one species will survive. o Because of his empirical studies on competing populations that showed this effect, this principle is reffered to as Gauses principle.