Question

A population crash occurs when

Answer 1

Answer: d. a population overshoots the carrying capacity and environmental pressures and shortfalls begin to exert their effects.

Explanation:

A carrying capacity of the ecosystem can be define as the maximum size of a population that an ecosystem can support in terms of availability of resources such as water, food, mates and other requirements. The population crash occurs when the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.  In such situation an overshoot of the population occurs when the birth rate exceeds the death rate or when the rate of emigration is more than the rate of immigration. As, a result of this the ecosystem will be incapable of supporting the exceed in numbers in terms of resources. Then the population declines by the effect of diseases, predation, natural calamities and by other shortfalls.

Answer 2

The correct answer is that a population overshoots the carrying capacity and environmental pressures and shortfalls begin to exert their effects. A certain area of environment only has limited resources such as food, water, habitat, etc. These limited resources are called the carrying capacity of the environment. If the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, there will be not enough resources to sustain the population therefore members of the population will die and the overall population number will crash hence the term population crash.