Practice question

“Environment is constant” for which of the following assumptions is made in lotka–volterra model. This relationship follows from the ecological mechanism represented by the terms in the item, not merely from an association between their names. Evidence should connect encounter rates or resource use to survival, growth, or reproduction. The ecological label follows that causal effect rather than superficial proximity between organisms. The remaining alternatives—“Resources are unlimited”, “Population growth is independent”, “Linear isoclines”—refer to different states, processes, or scales and therefore do not express the same causal relationship. Species interactions are classified by their net effects on the fitness of each participant, but those effects can change with density, resource supply, life stage, and environmental stress. Competition reduces access to shared limiting factors, whereas predation and parasitism transfer resources from victim to consumer. This distinction matters because similar surface patterns can arise through different mechanisms, whereas ecological prediction depends on identifying the mechanism that actually changes rates.