Carrying capacity, population equilibrium, and environment's maximal load

Abstract Gabriel et al. proposed solutions to two paradoxes raised by Levins and Ginzburg in the logistic equation. The resolution of these two paradoxes lies in the distinguishing of two concepts in ecological studies: carrying capacity and population equilibrium. I focus on the contradiction raised by the first model of Ginzburg's paradox and metapopulation framework with the traditional concept of carrying capacity. By the clarification of these two concepts and defining the carrying capacity as the environment's maximal load, the paradox will not arise.

[1]  E. Odum,et al.  Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems , 1989 .

[2]  G. Hutchinson,et al.  An Introduction to Population Ecology , 1978 .

[3]  A. Berryman Intuition and the logistic equation. , 1992, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[4]  Oscar E. Gaggiotti,et al.  Ecology, genetics, and evolution of metapopulations , 2004 .

[5]  Wenlong Li,et al.  A modified method of ecological footprint calculation and its application , 2005 .

[6]  William E. Rees,et al.  Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out , 1992 .

[7]  K. Gaston,et al.  Pattern and Process in Macroecology , 2000 .

[8]  Cang Hui,et al.  Metapopulation dynamics and distribution, and environmental heterogeneity induced by niche construction , 2004 .

[9]  M. Gilpin,et al.  Metapopulation Biology: Ecology, Genetics, and Evolution , 1997 .

[10]  Yoh Iwasa,et al.  The Geometry of Ecological Interactions: Lattice Models and Pair Approximation in Ecology , 2000 .

[11]  P. C. Dias,et al.  Sources and sinks in population biology. , 1996, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[12]  K. Gaston,et al.  Occupancy frequency distributions: patterns, artefacts and mechanisms , 2002, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[13]  John Vandermeer,et al.  The Competitive Structure of Communities: An Experimental Approach with Protozoa , 1969 .

[14]  L. Ginzburg Evolutionary consequences of basic growth equations. , 1992, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[15]  Deborah E. Goldberg,et al.  Population Ecology: First Principles , 2004 .

[16]  C. Hui,et al.  Dynamical complexity and metapopulation persistence , 2003 .

[17]  Michael A. McCarthy,et al.  The Allee effect, finding mates and theoretical models , 1997 .

[18]  C. Hui,et al.  Distribution patterns of metapopulation determined by Allee effects , 2004, Population Ecology.

[19]  Jean-Pierre Gabriel,et al.  Paradoxes in the logistic equation , 2005 .

[20]  Cang Hui,et al.  Niche construction and polymorphism maintenance in metapopulations , 2005, Ecological Research.

[21]  Peter Kareiva,et al.  Spatial ecology : the role of space in population dynamics and interspecific interactions , 1998 .

[22]  R. Levins Some Demographic and Genetic Consequences of Environmental Heterogeneity for Biological Control , 1969 .

[23]  Akira Sasaki,et al.  Statistical Mechanics of Population: The Lattice Lotka-Volterra Model , 1992 .

[24]  M. Begon,et al.  Ecology: Individuals, Populations and Communities , 1986 .