Page 89 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: Science, 2008 (revised)

F2. Developing Skills of Investigation and Communication
By the end of this course, students will:
f2.1 use appropriate terminology related to popu- lation dynamics, including, but not limited to: carrying capacity, population growth, population cycle, fecundity, and mortality [C]
f2.2 use conceptual and mathematical population growth models to calculate the growth of popu- lations of various species in an ecosystem (e.g., use the concepts of exponential, sigmoid, and sinusoidal growth to estimate the sizes of vari- ous populations) [PR, AI, C]
f2.3 determine, through laboratory inquiry or using computer simulations, the characteristics of population growth of two different popula- tions (e.g., the different population cycles of a predator and its prey; the population cycles of two populations that compete for food; the increase of Aboriginal compared to non-Aboriginal popu- lations and the significant difference in average age between the two groups) [PR, AI, C]
F. Understanding Basic Concepts
By the end of this course, students will:
f3.1 explain the concepts of interaction (e.g., competition, predation, defence mechanism, symbiotic relationship, parasitic relationship) between different species
f3.2 describe the characteristics of a given popu- lation, such as its growth, density (e.g., fecundity, mortality), distribution, and min- imum viable size
f3.3 explain factors such as carrying capacity, fe- cundity, density, and predation that cause fluctuation in populations, and analyse the fluc- tuation in the population of a species of plant, wild animal, or microorganism
f3.4 explain the concept of energy transfer in a human population in terms of the flow of food energy in the production, distribution, and use of food resources
f3.5 explain how a change in one population in an aquatic or terrestrial ecosystem can affect the entire hierarchy of living things in that system (e.g., how the disappearance of crayfish from a lake causes a decrease in the bass population of the lake; how the disappearance of beaver from an ecosystem causes a decrease in the wolf population in that ecosystem)
POPULATION DyNAMICS

Biology
SBI4U