population explosion
nounDefinition of population explosion
: a pyramiding of numbers of a biological population
especially
: the recent great increase in human numbers resulting from increased survival and exponential population growth
Examples of population explosion in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Exacerbating all this, of course, is Africa’s population explosion and the concomitant increase in the numbers of cattle, goats, horses, and donkeys (lion prey) that rural people keep in their villages and bomas. — Klara Glowczewska, Town & Country, "How the New Lion King Film Could Help the Real-Life Lion Crisis," 1 Aug. 2019 There has been a huge population explosion in the past few millennia. — William Poundstone, Vox, "A math equation that predicts the end of humanity," 5 July 2019 Last year, Stanford University researchers provided an explanation for the population explosion: the evolution of flight. — Jonathon Keats, Discover Magazine, "The Origins of Flight, From Birds to Bugs to Planes," 21 June 2019 The diffusion of medical innovations—which also often originated in Europe—contributed to population explosions in the rest of the world. — Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, "Incredible Shrinking Europe," 11 Feb. 2019 The most obvious features of Fred’s new time series are the devastating effect of the 14th century Black Death pandemic and the population explosion that accompanied the industrial revolution. — Jon Sindreu, WSJ, "Fred Gets Acquainted With William the Conqueror," 6 Dec. 2018 An unanticipated population explosion had taken place along the L line in Brooklyn, as young people were driven out of Manhattan by high rents. — William Finnegan, The New Yorker, "Can Andy Byford Save the Subways?," 2 July 2018 The relatively warm winter of 2016-2017 led to an unexpected lanternfly population explosion last year and prompted the Pennsylvania agriculture department to place 13 southeastern counties under quarantine. — Jonathan M. Pitts, Washington Post, "Maryland is bracing for an invasion of lanternflies, and racing to slow their spread," 28 Feb. 2018 Steppe by steppe That branching seems to have been part of a Y. pestis population explosion around 4,000 years ago, which is when phylogenetic analysis of ancient bacterial genomes suggests that plague strains diversified rapidly. — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, "4,000-year-old genomes point to origins of bubonic plague," 12 June 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'population explosion.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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