What does exponential growth mean in biology?

1 Answer
Sep 24, 2014

I am no expert in biology by any means, but exponential growth occurs when its population growth rate is proportional to the size of population itself, that is, the bigger the population is, the faster it grows. This is not typically the case for larger animals due to the lack of food supplies, living space, and so on; however, it is a reasonable assumption for much smaller organisms like bacterias since they do not require a lot of food or space, and they seem to reproduce quite aggressively. Remember that exponential function is a fast growing function, so exponential growth is suitable for fast growing animal populations.