Emigration as a Possible Mechanism Permitting the Regulation of Population Density Below Carrying Capacity
- 1 January 1962
- journal article
- research article
- Published by University of Chicago Press in The American Naturalist
- Vol. 96 (886), 29-33
- https://doi.org/10.1086/282204
Abstract
A tendency to emigrate can be shown to have selective advantage under certain conditions. These advantages appear to be best fulfilled by a density-responsive type of emigratory drive, that is, one in which a sensitivity to increasing density, levels may release emigratory behavior before the carrying capacity of the population''s environment is reached or exceeded. Where this is true, a genetic balance is postulated between a tendency to emigrate and a tendency to be sedentary. Such a balance could then result in "premature" density regulation by emigration under circumstances or at times in which the carrying capacity was unusually great or in situations where high intensity of emigration was particularly advantageous. Moreover, it seems likely that, if the density-responsive emigratory impulse happened to be frustrated by barriers or lack of a density gradient, density regulation may occur through the hyper-development of those very factors which ordinarily bring about emigration. Some possible implications of this proposed mechanism to theories of population regulation are discussed.This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- STUDIES ON COMPETITION IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS. IX. EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON MIGRATION IN DROSOPHILIA MELANOGASTEREvolution, 1958
- NOTE ON A “PERMANENT” EXPERIMENTAL ALTERATION OF GENETIC CONSTITUTION IN A NATURAL POPULATIONProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1954
- Regulatory Mechanisms in House-Mouse Populations: The Effect of Limited Food Supply on an Unconfined PopulationEcology, 1954
- Studies of a Small Mammal Population in Bagley Wood, BerkshireJournal of Animal Ecology, 1942