Figure 13.7 The overshoot and die-off of a reindeer population. A herd of 25 reindeer was introduced to St. Paul Island in Alaska in 1911. The population experienced a rapid increase in size that approximates an exponential J-shaped growth curve, shown by the dashed black line. After growing to nearly 2,000 animals in 1938, the population crashed, probably because the animals exhausted the food supply.

Data from V. B. Scheffer, The rise and fall of a reindeer herd, Scientific Monthly 73 (1951): 356–362.