Imagine that you are a wildlife biologist supervising a project to establish a p
ID: 140789 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine that you are a wildlife biologist supervising a project to establish a population of wolves on an island. The island has viable populations of other animals on which wolf packs can prey. Describe expected changes in the size of the wolf population over the next 30 years, assuming that no other animals are brought to the island after the initial stocking of wolves. Explain these changes. (answer should include carrying capacity, what happens to populations of other animals, available food source, population increases/decreases, etc.
Explanation / Answer
When you introduce a wolf population in an island that have no previous record of other predators, the other viable populations that already exist in that island will have a new predator which keeps their life at risk. At this stage the carrying capacity of wolf is high because they dont have other competitors for food and all. The wolves keeps on feeding on other smaller preys thus wolf population increases but there is a mass reduction in the population of prey. Eventually after many years the whole prey population will decrese or even vanish from the island due to the increasing wolf population. Thus at a stage, the increased wolf population will starve due to lack of food because there is no more prey for them on the island, this create a reduction in carrying capacity for wolves and at last the wolf population will also come to an end.
Also, when wolf population increse on decrease in prey population there is high demand of food for the predators this makes a competition with in the species (intraspecific competition) of wolves which can also lead for its population fall.