Sci/275 Checkpoint: Population Size

CheckPoint: Population Size

• Resource: Ch. 7 Alien Invasion VLR

• Due Date: Day 4 [your Assignments Section]

• View the Ch. 7 Alien Invasion VLR located under the Week Four Materials section of your student web page.

• Post a 200- to 300-word response to the following: Explain the four factors that produce changes in population size. Which factors are affecting the population size in the video? What do you predict will happen to the nutria population after all the land is depleted of the nutrias’ food resource?

Factors that produce changes in population size consist of four aspects. One being, the age in which the animal begins reproducing, two being, how long an animal can and will actually reproduce during it’s life, how many times the animal reproduces in its lifetime, and the number off offspring that are born in each pregnancy and who live. In this particular video, the factors in which are affecting the nutria are as follows; The female nutria can and usually start reproducing as early as 6 months old and in only the next three years they can give birth to over forty offspring, and then those offspring can go and do the same thing when they hit the correct level for reproduction. Another factor which can affect the population size in the nutria is how much they eat. They eat as much as a quarter of their own bodyweight a day. As the population grows and the environment is expected to keep up, it is unfeasible for it to do so, so the nutria will either have to migrate to other places for food or adapt to the food that is available. With the fur industry taking a fall the nutria were released and left in an unfamiliar place leaving them to fend for themselves and an overcrowded population of nutria. Nature will balance itself out if need be I do believe.