Describe a population growth curve, differentiating between systems with and without environmental ...

Organisms newly introduced into a favorable environment with no competitors for food or
space will reproduce exponentially, tracing a J-shaped population growth curve. In nature,
very few populations reproduce at this maximal rate, however, because environmental
conditions are rarely ideal and because limiting factors in the environment quickly slow the
rate of population growth. The sum of the effects of these limiting factors in the environment
is called environmental resistance. Environmental resistance causes the actual population
growth curve to be lower than the maximum potential growth curve. When limiting factors
intrude, the growth curve is S-shaped; it gradually flattens toward an upper limit of the
number of individuals in the population. The final number of organisms oscillates around the
carrying capacity of the environment for that species, which is the population size of each
species that a community can support indefinitely under a stable set of environmental
conditions.