On the distinction between lag and delay in population growth.

The analysis and results presented in this paper provide conclusive evidence to distinguish between the delay effect and the lag as two biologically distinct phenomena. It therefore dispels the incorrect notion that delay effects represented by delay differential equations are the biological reason behind the lag phase in microorganism growth. The resulting consequence so far is that the only other reason for the lag phase is the existence of unstable stationary states. The latter are a result of accounting for the microbial metabolic mass transfer in the population growth process.