Exponential & logistic growt
How populations grow when they have unlimited resources (and how resource limits change that pattern). Introduction In theory, any kind of organism could take over the Earth just by reproducing. For instance, imagine that we started with a single pair of male and female rabbits. If these rabbits and their descendants reproduced at top speed ("like bunnies") for 7 7 7 7 years, without any deaths, we would have enough rabbits to cover the entire state of Rhode Island 1 , 2 , 3 ^{1,2,3} 1 , 2 , 3 start superscript, 1, comma, 2, comma, 3, end superscript . And that's not even so impressive – if we used E. coli bacteria instead, we could start with just one bacterium and have enough bacteria to cover the Earth with a 1 1 1 1 -foot layer in just 3 6 36 36 36 hours 4 ^4 4 start superscript, 4, end superscript ! As you've probably noticed, there isn't a 1 1 1 1 -foot layer of bacteria covering the entire Earth (at least, not at my house), nor have ...