A population usually grows when it has what it needs. If theres plenty of food and other resources, the population will get bigger. Look at Table 18.1. It shows how a population of bacteria grew. A single bacteria cell was added to a container of nutrients. Conditions were ideal. The bacteria divided every 30 minutes. After just 10 hours, there were more than a million bacteria! Assume the bacteria population keeps growing at this rate. How many bacteria will there be at 10.5 hours? Or at 12 hours? Time (hours) 0 0.5 Number of Bacteria 1 2 Time (hours) 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5 10 Number of Bacteria 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1,024 2,048 4,096 8,192 16,384 32,768 65,536 131,072 262,144 524,288 1,048,576 The population growth rate is how fast a population is growing. The letter r stands for the growth rate. The growth rate equals the number of new members added to the population in a year for each 100 members already in the population. The growth rate includes new members added to the population and old members removed from the population. Births add new members to the population. Deaths remove members from the population. The formula for population growth rate is: r = b - d, where b = birth rate (number of births in 1 year per 100 population members) d = death rate (number of deaths in 1 year per 100 population members) If the birth rate is greater than the death rate, r is positive. This means that the population is growing bigger. For example, if b = 10 and d = 8, r = 2. This means that the population is growing by 2 individuals per year for every 100 members of the population. This may not sound like much, but its a fairly high rate of growth. A population growing at this rate would double in size in just 35 years! If the birth rate is less than the death rate, r is negative. This means that the population is becoming smaller. What do you think might cause this to happen? A population cant keep growing bigger and bigger forever. Sooner or later, it will run out of things it needs. For a given species, there is a maximum population that can be supported by the environment. This maximum is called the carrying capacity. When a population gets close to the carrying capacity, it usually grows more slowly. You can see this in Figure 18.16. When the population reaches the carrying capacity, it stops growing. Figure 18.17 shows how the human population has grown. It grew very slowly for tens of thousands of years. Then, in the 1800s, something happened to change all that. The human population started to grow much faster. The industrial revolution is what happened. The industrial revolution began in the late 1700s in Europe, North America, and a few other places. In these places, the human population grew faster. While there had always been a lot of births, the population grew because the death rate fell. It fell for several reasons: 1. New farm machines were invented. They increased the amount of food that could be produced. With more food, people were healthier and could live longer. 2. Steam engines and railroads were built. These machines could quickly carry food long distances. This made food shortages less likely. 3. Sanitation was improved. Sewers were dug to carry away human wastes (see Figure 18.18). This helped reduce the spread of disease. With better food and less chance of disease, the death rate fell. More children lived long enough to reach adulthood and have children of their own. As the death rate fell, the birth rate stayed high for a while. This caused rapid population growth. However, the birth rate in these countries has since fallen to a rate close to that of the low death rate. The result was slow population growth once again. These changes are called the demographic transition. More recently, the death rate has fallen because of the availability of more food and medical advances: A green
Output: annual births minus deaths per 100 population members