Edit page | Page history | Printable version

Density-dependent

(Science: epidemiology) 1. Effects whose intensity changes with increasing population density.

2. Effects whose intensity increases with increasing population density, for example a mortality which becomes very high near a carrying capacity. Effects which become less pronounced at higher population sizes (perhaps the reduction in fecundity caused by the difficulty of mating) are sometimes called inverse density dependent. Density dependent effects are often a cause of nonlinearity in a model.