Natural Sciences >> Integrative BiologyImportance of Predation Rates to Keeping a Healthy Ecosystemby Hunter Bachmeier
Submitted : Fall 2020
This project focuses on the importance of predation within natural habitats which helps to protect the natural balance of the ecosystem. Predators and Prey are both key components of an ecosystem, however sometimes predators, such as otters and lynxes, are overhunted which leads to several problems within the habitat that they lived in. With otters, over hunting can lead to sea urchin populations exploding, resulting in the death of kelp forests, and subsequently the several other species that live within them due to not having a natural predator to keep them in check. This leads to zones known as “Urchin Barrens” which are large strips of ocean floor in which almost nothing but sea urchins live. In the case that Lynxes were overhunted, it would result in hares to rapidly reproduce as they now lost an apex predator. This would cause the hares to essentially “overflow” as they would begin to exceed the carrying capacity of their environment eventually, and would begin to eat most of the vegetation in the area and also push out other herbivores and small creatures that live in the area. In order to fix this problem, there are several laws to help prevent the overhunting of key predators such as otters and lynxes to avoid the issues stated above. If one of them were to be driven to near extinction however, then humans would either have to intervene to assist the current predator to reestablish itself in the environment, or to introduce a new predator in the case that the previous one died off to much. This shows that predators are an important part of the ecosystem that help to keep the balance between predator and prey and keep the biodiversity of the ecosystem healthy.
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