Population Growth Assignment

The initial amount of seeds in the Bell Pepper was 521 seeds. After five generations the

population grew to 29,471,590,407,799,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 seeds.

When you look at the graph of Figure 1, since it represents exponential growth, the first four

years seem like nothing really is happening. Although it doesn’t look like anything is happening,

you can look at the data and it is growing quite a bit because each generation is being

multiplied by itself causing the growth to grow significantly each year. The graph doesn’t show

this growth in detail because the result after five years is so much larger than the first few

years, that it seems insignificant, but the numbers show otherwise.

FIGURE 1: Graph of Bell Pepper Population after 5 years.

 One environmental factor that might limit natural or wild populations is Habitat

Destruction. This is where the natural habitat has been removed or disturbed. These

disturbances have affected species to the point that they can’t tolerate the changes which

could possibly lead to extinction if continuation of this problem occurs. Due to human needs

and work, farmers for example, will want to expand their farms to be able to grow more crop

which could possibly affect more species as their habitat becomes limited each time something

like this happens.

Another factor is Habitat Fragmentation which is the process whereby a large,

continuous area of habitat is both reduced in area and divided into two or more fragments.

When fragments of the area are left, it makes it hard for a species to potentially disperse or

colonize an area due to the barriers. (Primack & Sher, 2016, pg. 107). Another factor is

Environmental Pollution. Pesticide, water, and air pollution are all examples of the types of

pollutions that could limit natural or wild populations. Pollution is a threat to 90% of the

endangered fishes and freshwater mussels in the United States (Primack & Sher, 2016, pg. 115).

Through that example, we can see the effects on the aquatic ecosystems and those species that

live in that ecosystem.

The last factor I will talk about it Overexploitation. An example of this is the fisheries.

Bluefin Tuna are being transferred from a fishing trawler to a factory ship, aboard which huge

quantities of fish are efficiently processed for human consumption. Such efficiency can result in

massive overfishing. (Primack & Sher, 2016, pg. 127) In a lot of areas there are regulations on

when certain species can be hunt or fished or any other type of way to catch animals.
 If the population were subjected to some of these environmental factors for a

considerable amount of time, there would be changes in the population. The above factors are

an example of such changes. There would be a lack of area for species to live in if it kept getting

disturbed. While continuing the destruction of the environment, especially in segments, the

species are very limited to where they live and wouldn’t be able to disperse which could either

cause overpopulation of an animal or potentially lead to extinction. We would also hunt more

than we should and cause the overexploitation. There are many other changes we could see,

but those are just a few of them.

 Reflection

It is interesting to find out the different things that could happen to certain

environments. There are many different things that can contribute to the effects of the

conservation of the environment and the effects it has on the species living in them. By doing

this assignment, it was cool to see how the multiplication of the “Bell Pepper Seed” would

duplicate to be so large and see the effects it would have on the environment. If it were true

that this happened, then there could be many problems within the ecosystem and could cause

extinction to a variety of species. There are a lot of threats not only by the species that could

cause problems, humans also have a role in how the environment can be. Things such as

pollution, disturbing certain regions, and many other things we do affect the way species live

and go through what they need to. I haven’t thought of all these things before, so it was

interesting to learn about what we can possibly do to try and reduce some of the problems.
 REFERENCES

Primack, Richard B., and Anna A. Sher. Introduction to Conservation Biology. Sinauer Associates,
Inc., Publishers, 2016.