The Powerpoint shown was almost identical to lectures I had in Population and Community Ecology, where we discussed demographics of a population and how to calculate them, This also included discussions of growth/survivorship types and parameters that may impact a population, such as the carrying capacity or probability of surviving interactions with other individuals (assuming a sort of aggressive or predatory interaction). Some of these concepts have also been touched in Conservation Biology, Herpetology, North American Wildlife, and Intro to Wildlife Conservation.
In Calculus, we have discussed modelling functions and what goes into them, namely with the concept of population dynamics in mind. Demographics serve as model parameters that are implemented into the function, which can include things like birth rate, death rate, immigration and emigration, etc.
The idea of limits are implemented in that the population's limit is the carrying capacity, which is somewhat related to density dependence, where the density of a population can change the rates of birth/death rates, so as the number of individuals in the population approaches the limit, rates change. Logistic growth, a form of growth discussed in population ecology, was also discussed in class, which is essentially what's described above; the population approaches an upper limit, but does not surpass it. Exponential growth, another form of growth discussed in population ecology, is much simpler, in that a population grows without parameters working on it (and as such it is normally a less accurate model, since there is always a limit to growth).
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