Population

How it is used

In biology, population is not limited to people. Ecologists measure population size, density and growth and study why a population increases, declines or crashes. Population genetics studies how allele frequencies change over time.

Example sentences

1. The wolf population in the park has doubled in ten years.

2. Small, isolated populations lose genetic diversity quickly.

Common collocations

• population size
• population density
• population growth
• wild population
• population decline

Related terms

• speciesA group of similar organisms that can breed with each other and produce fertile offspring. It is the basic unit used to classify living things.
• ecosystemA community of living things together with the non-living parts of their environment, such as water, soil and climate, all interacting as one system.
• habitatThe natural place where a particular organism or species lives and finds the food, shelter and conditions it needs.
• natural selectionThe process by which individuals with traits better suited to their environment survive and reproduce more, so those traits become more common over generations.
• biodiversityThe variety of life in a particular place or on Earth as a whole, including the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• population · Statistics
• population · Academic English & Research

More terms: Ecology and Ecosystems

• food chain
• predator
• food web
• decomposer
• symbiosis
• invasive species