David James Hoff

Prof Taylor
Biology 1120-401

Population Growth: Its a good thing that I LOVE Bell Peppers


1. My first green bell pepper had 504 seeds, and I made a mess in the kitchen.
2. During the 5
th
generation I had 3,252,016064,000 green bell peppers
3. Since my 5
th
generation number was so high, I used a log scale with a base of 500 on my y-
axis. My x-axis is much simpler, numbered 1-5 to represent the years.
4. Possible environmental factors that may cut my population down, would be:
a. High winds (could separate the population, smaller groups may not survive well)
b. Water contamination/pollution
c. Wildfires
d. Predators
e. Lack of food and other resources due to the carrying capacity being reached.

5. If my population was impacted by:
a. High Winds, a couple different things could happen.
i. If winds blew a significant amount of seeds each year to another fertile area,
it could increase the population significantly because the carrying capacity
would be more difficult to reach. Since there would be an abundance of
peppers in multiple areas, predators would not be as much of a threat to the
original area.
ii. If winds blew a significant amount of seeds each year to a barren area, those
seeds would not become peppers; the population would grow much slower
and would not reach its carrying capacity for a while longer.
b. Water contamination/pollution could completely destroy the pepper population
within just a few years. Another scenario is that most of peppers could die and a few
may live after a few generations of adaptation.
c. Frequent wildfires would most likely wipe out the entire pepper population.
d. Most predators would only eat/take as much as they need of the peppers (unless
these predators were greedy humans). However, if the predators ate mostly peppers,
their population could flourish and the pepper population could die out after several
years.
e. If the peppers experience lack of sunlight, water, CO2, etc: they could all die within a
couple years, but I find that unlikely. I believe that certain areas in this massive
population would die off first and then the still living peppers would have access to
the resources that the dead would have used.