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0.5: What Happens To The Population

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Question 1. Compare when r is 0.5 and -0.5. What happens to the population? When does it increase and when does it decrease? Does it ever go extinct (goes to zero and never comes back)?

Population size reaches zero in just approximately 11 years when the exponential growth rate, r is negative (-0.5). This means that the population is undergoing extinction. However, when the exponential growth rate, r is positive (0.5), the population size is fixed to 1000 individuals. The time taken for the population size to be fixed is approximately the same as when it undergoes extinction, which is about 11 years.

Question 2. Compare the behavior of the population between r=1, r=2 and r=3. Is it always true that greater r means population increase only?

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