Definition: Environmental resistance is a process where combined elements restrain a certain specie to grow uncontrollably. In other words, by employing different variables the nature appears to regulate species’ growth to avoid that they reach their full potential or an overpopulation scenario.
What Does Environmental Resistance Mean?
These elements can be classified by their nature as biotic and abiotic. Biotic elements are the living variables of nature such as plants, animals or fruits. From an environmental resistance perspective, the biotic factors can act against the growth of a specie by predation, parasitism, competition or poisoning.
On the other hand, abiotic factors are lifeless components that form the environment like sunlight or rain. These elements can also act against population growth in cases such as droughts, temperature drops or climate conditions like hurricanes. These resistance is said to be surpassed through evolution and adaptability.
Some species adjust themselves or become acclimatized to overcome environmental resistance, which leads to exponential population growth in some cases. Nevertheless, nature acts as a regulator to maintain proper levels, if no human alterations have come into play. The theory of evolution assumes that microorganisms went over this resistance to develop towards more complex life forms.
Example
Let’s say for example certain poisonous plants are growing in a wild forest. These plants have the ability to incapacitate and kill a living creature within seconds. Nevertheless, they are very susceptible to sunlight and they die within days after being considerably exposed to it. Nature applies its environmental resistance through sunlight to avoid the uncontrollable growth of these plants.
This prevents the ecosystem from dying because of the plant’s poison but it also allows the plants to exist comfortably. If a person decides to intentionally add a considerable number of additional plants to this environment it can alter the nature’s capacity to self-regulate and this can create a chaotic situation for this ecosystem.
