Pythons are generalist predators, consuming a wide variety of prey including birds, mammals ranging from rodents to deer, and alligators. A road survey showed a 99 percent decrease in the frequency of raccoon and opossum observations within python areas from 2003 to 2011. Rabbits and foxes have also disappeared from the area. Do you think food availability limits, or could limit, the carrying capacity of Burmese pythons in the Everglades?

Question

Peyton Wong

Biology

31 March, 23:37

Pythons are generalist predators, consuming a wide variety of prey including birds, mammals ranging from rodents to deer, and alligators. A road survey showed a 99 percent decrease in the frequency of raccoon and opossum observations within python areas from 2003 to 2011. Rabbits and foxes have also disappeared from the area. Do you think food availability limits, or could limit, the carrying capacity of Burmese pythons in the Everglades?

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Answers (1)

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Hillary Hobbs · Answer 1

Answer: As pythons are generalists, the food availability would not be a primary factor in determining the carrying capacity of pythons.

Explanation:

A generalist species or organisms are those which are capable to survive in wide variety of environmental conditions. Such species can make use of variety of resources available in the native or new habitat. For example, a heterotroph dependent upon variety of diet sources.

The carrying capacity is the maximum number of members of the population of species that an ecosystem can sustain.

According to the given situation, the pythons are generalists predators and they are consuming a wide variety of prey. The decrease in the population of raccoons and opossums indicates that the rate of predation is very high in these pythons. Also, the population of rabbits and foxes also disappeared from the area. In the long run the size of the python population may become food limited. The population of python may not increase exponentially.