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Scientists can predict tipping points for ecosystem collapse. The most frequently used model for predicting food web collapse is called R50, which is a reliable measurement model for food web robustness. [29] However, there are others: i.e. marine ecosystem assessments can use RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database.
The diversity of species and genes in ecological communities affects the functioning of these communities. These ecological effects of biodiversity in turn are affected by both climate change through enhanced greenhouse gases, aerosols and loss of land cover [citation needed], and biological diversity, causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species and local populations.
Though studies supporting the hypothesis began in the 1960s, the first concrete statements of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis didn't occur until the 1970s. [2] The hypothesis was initially illustrated using what has been referred to as a "hump-backed model", which graphed the proposed relationship between diversity and disturbance. [ 2 ]
Increased nutrients can stimulate an algal bloom in waterbodies, increasing primary production but making the ecosystem less stable. [31] This would raise secondary production and have a trophic cascade effect across the food chain, ultimately increasing overall ecosystem productivity. [32]
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
Ecosystem complexity was once thought to reduce stability by enabling the effects of disturbances, such as species loss or species invasion, to spread and amplify through the network. However, other characteristics of network structure have been identified that reduce the spread of indirect effects and thus enhance ecosystem stability. [24]
The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network consists of a group of over 1800 scientists and students studying ecological processes over extended temporal and spatial scales. Twenty-eight LTER sites cover a diverse set of ecosystems. It is part of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER). [1]
An ecological cascade effect is a series of secondary extinctions that are triggered by the primary extinction of a key species in an ecosystem.Secondary extinctions are likely to occur when the threatened species are: dependent on a few specific food sources, mutualistic (dependent on the key species in some way), or forced to coexist with an invasive species that is introduced to the ecosystem.