If Nothing Else...Remember This

Being tested on biology topics after my four years at this school taught me that I know little about plants and have forgotten a handful of details. At first I thought these details are useless, but then I considered this...those details are far from useless they are broad ideas centralized in one word. In fact these details are really important, because they enhance communication and give an opportunity to talk to people that may not know a lot about biology.

So as an example of this whole detail thing I'm talking about...let's talk about BIOTIC POTENTIAL. I thought this was about metabolically efficient organisms that produce little waste in comparison to how they obtain nutrients from their food. So large herbivores like cows should fit the definition right, since they eat vegetation and have a complex digestive system. Wrong. Rodents was the right answer.

So what is biotic potential. It turns out that biotic potential is defined as the maximum reproductive potential of a population. So in short I was about as wrong as I could because those large herbivores are lucky to have one calf or offspring a year.
On the other hand rodents have offspring like crazy...I mean when you say rabbit what do you think of? But with this lesson in what this detail means, you can now say instead, "those rabbits -do you know- what like crazy," you can say, "they just have a high biotic potential."