Brett Barratt

Professor Taylor
BIOL-1120-F14-Taylor
October 11, 2014
Population Growth Modeling Exponential Growth Potential in Bell Peppers
In order to gain a better understanding of the dangers of population growth, all seeds were collected
from a red bell pepper and put into an exponential growth model. With a single fruit carrying 223 seeds,
we will assume that each seed will successfully germinate into a bell pepper plant that will also produce
a single fruit containing 223 seeds. This pattern will continue for at least five generations.
1. How many seeds were in your initial pepper? This represents the first generation.
There were 223 seeds in the bell pepper fruit.
2. How many plants were alive in your pepper population after only 5 generations?
After five generations, stemming from a single fruit, there are now 551,473,077,343 bell pepper plants.

3. Describe your graph.
The graph shows a population of bell pepper plants expanding exponentially from a single fruit, to a first
generation of 223 offspring, through five generations to 551,473,077,343 plants.

223
49,729
11,089,567
2,472,973,441
551,473,077,343
1
100
10,000
1,000,000
100,000,000
10,000,000,000
1,000,000,000,000
1 2 3 4 5 6
Generations of Bell Pepper Plants
Number of Bell Pepper Plants
4. Make a list of five environmental factors that might limit natural or wild populations (not necessarily
pepper plant or human populations).
There are many factors which could put a check to unlimited exponential growth, such as:
Availability of light
Temperature
Availability of water
Soil Quality
Available land free from competition
5. If a population were subjected to some of these environmental factors for a considerable length of
time, would you expect to see any changes in the population? Based on the information provided above,
explain your answer. BE SPECIFIC which factors would cause which changes?
If the population of bell pepper plants were subjected to a drop in available light, temperature,
availability of water, or soil quality, the overall population growth would decrease dramatically. As all
these factors are essential to a quick seed gestation period, plant growth, and reproduction, these
factors would all stand to limit the growth potential of the bell pepper plant population.
Furthermore, if the bell pepper plant population had to compete for available land to grow with other
plant species or among itself, there would be a decrease in growth, and we might see some
characteristics favorable to growing in a competitive environment begin to emerge as dominant. For
example, if growing in an area occupied by large numbers of daisy type flowers that grew tall and quick
to maximize exposure to sunlight, we might see the bell pepper plants begin to emulate this behavior in
order to keep from being shut out from this essential resource. As more and more bell pepper and daisy
plants grew in the area, the population of both would swing to support taller plants.