Survivorship Curves, Life Tables and Growth Models
This historical Ecology URL is preserved and now points learners conceptually to Lecture 10 of the current course.
A life table summarizes survival and mortality across ages or stages. Survivorship curves provide a visual representation of how the proportion of an original cohort remains alive through time. Type I, Type II, and Type III curves are useful idealized patterns, but real populations may depart from these shapes because survival varies with age, environment, density, disease, predation, and life history.
Population growth models provide simplified ways to reason about change in abundance. Exponential growth describes unconstrained proportional growth, whereas logistic growth introduces density dependence through carrying capacity. These models are conceptual tools rather than guarantees that natural populations will follow a perfect mathematical trajectory.
Continue with Lecture 10: Survivorship Curves and Population Growth Models.