Question

Does carrying capacity only looks at living individuals and it is all about the maximum living individuals an environment can support? So to identify an occurence of carrying capacity, we only need to look to see if the living population is constant at its maximum (not discussing fluctuations, just the overall trend)?

Answer 1

Carrying capacity of a population is attained, when living individuals of a population multiply at it's maximum rate initially, and then the population growth becomes stable. This stability is reached because, resources in the environment is limited. As population size continues to grow, competition for space and other resources increases. At this stage, growth rate becomes equal to death rate. So, we can say that carrying capacity is the maximum population size (that is, maximum living individuals) that an environment can sustain. We can tell that a population has reached it's carrying capacity, when it's growth becomes stable. Beyond the carrying capacity, the population size decreases.