You are studying a population of birds that are preyed on by feral cats. You hav

Question

You are studying a population of birds that are preyed on by feral cats. You have four study sites where the bird populations are roughly equal, and do an experiment where you have one treatment per study site: 1) food supplementation and removal of feral cats, 2) food supplementation (feral cats are left alone), 3) food restriction (feral cats are left alone), 4) food restriction and feral cats are removed. You observe that the bird population density is highest in the first treatment, and roughly equal in the other three treatments. Why might all three treatments (2-4) result in the same number of birds being present in the population, even though you manipulated different variables?

Explanation / Answer

The growth of any population depends upon the following factors,

The population growth is maximum when there is abundant availability of food, absence of predators, absence of disease and favorable environmental and climatic conditions. The population growth in these conditions follow a exponential growth pattern. When one of these factors are compromised, the population growth follows a logistic growth pattern in which the population increase until it reaches a carrying capacity and then it plateaus off. This is the reason for the bird population to remain the same even though we have manipulated different variables.

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