ABSTRACT
A bottle filled with the insect drosophila – an organism that is born, reproduces, and dies in a flicker – is photographed at three points in time (Figure 8.1). In the first snapshot, the sparsely populated bottle, rich in food, finds generations of happy fruit flies gradually increasing and living long lives. In the second photo, the happy fruit flies multiply rapidly, sharply increasing their numbers until, in the third image, the fruit flies are so numerous the bottle can no longer support them, a point in time where death rises, birth declines, and population growth crashes. Fruit flies in a bottle, at three points in time. From Raymond Pearl (1930) The Biology of Population Growth, New York: Alfred Knopf. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203770283/8bccfe5f-e7e1-4d22-9696-b014d6d27054/content/fig8_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
