Population dynamics reflects an underlying birth-death process, where the rates associated with different events may depend on external environmental conditions and on the population density.A whole family of simple and popular deterministic models (like logistic growth) support a transcritical bifurcation point between an extinction phase and an active phase. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the phases of that system, taking into account both the endogenous demographic noise (random birth and death events) and the effect of environmental stochasticity that causes variations in birth and death rates. Three phases are identified: in the inactive phase the mean time to extinction T is independent of the carrying capacity N , and scales logarithmically with the initial population size. In the power-law phase T ∼ N q and the exponential phase T ∼ exp(αN ). All three phases and the transitions between them are studied in detail. The breakdown of the continuum approximation is identified inside the power-law phase, and the accompanied changes in decline modes are analyzed. The applicability of the emerging picture to the analysis of ecological timeseries and to the management of conservation efforts is briefly discussed.

Extinction is the ultimate absorbing state of any stochastic birth-death process, hence the time to extinction is an important characteristic of any natural population. Here we consider logistic and logistic-like systems under the combined effect of demographic and bounded environmental stochasticity. Three phases are identified: an inactive phase where the mean time to extinction T increases logarithmically with the initial population size, an active phase where T grows exponentially with the carrying capacity N , and temporal Griffiths phase, with power-law relationship between T and N . The system supports an exponential phase only when the noise is bounded, in which case the continuum (diffusion) approximation breaks down within the Griffiths phase. This breakdown is associated with a crossover between qualitatively different survival statistics and decline modes. To study the power-law phase we present a new WKB scheme which is applicable both in the diffusive and in the non-diffusive regime.