carrying capacity
19.2 Population Growth and Regulation Populations with unlimited resources grow exponentiallywith an accelerating growth rate. When resources become limiting, populations follow a logistic growth curve in which population size will level off at the carrying capacity. Populations are regulated by a variety of density-dependent and density-independent factors. Life-history characteristics, such as age at first reproduction or numbers of offspring, are characteristics that evolve in populations just as anatomy or behavior can evolve over time. The model of r- and K-selection suggests that characters, and possibly suites of characters, may evolve adaptations to population stability near the carrying capacity K-selection or rapid population growth and collapse r-selection . Species will exhibit adaptations somewhere on a continuum between these two extremes.