The effect of an upper limit to population size on persistence time (Q1909286)

We study the first passage time distribution (FPTD) for a stochastic model of density-independent population growth which includes a hard upper limit to population size. We discuss the conditions under which this distribution may approximated by the FPTD of a Wiener process with a reflecting boundary condition, for which an exact calculation is presented in an appendix. We compare the FPTD of the new model with its counterpart in the model without an upper limit. The most important effects of introducing the upper limit are: (a) ultimate extinction becomes certain; (b) if the long run growth rate in the absence of the upper boundary was small but positive, extinction within ecologically significant times is likely; (c) for larger values of the long run growth rate, persistence over ecologically significant times is almost certain. We discuss the implications of result (b) for conservation. Result (c) establishes that ``density-value'' regulation can produce persistent, but bounded, populations.