If a population grows until a limiting factor prevents further growth, the population is approaching what?

• A. Carrying capacity.
• B. Mutation.
• C. Genetic drift.
• D. Speciation.

Answer: (A)

Carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals that an environment can sustain indefinitely given available resources like food, water, and space. When a population grows, these resources become limited, slowing birth rates or increasing death rates, so growth levels off as the population nears that maximum sustainable size. This idea is part of logistic growth, where the population approaches a stable size near the environment’s carrying capacity. Other options don’t fit: mutation changes genetic material, not population limits; genetic drift is random allele-frequency change, often in small populations; speciation is the formation of new species.