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Trophic Cascades and Keystone Species EdZOOcating Adventures
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dh42Uo8UznA
https://member.edzoocating.com/ • Visit our EdZOOcating Adventures website to access the full Trophic Cascades and Keystone Species lesson, including quizzes, activities, and so much more! • • Subscribe to our channel: • / @edzoocating6901 • Follow us on Instagram! • https://www.instagram.com/edzoocating... • See our products on TPT: • https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/S... • If you’re like me, you love to be outside observing nature and healthy ecosystems. Ecosystems work best when they are balanced; when every organism is doing its job. What happens when the ecosystem is out of balance? That’s what we’re going to discuss today! Let’s explore. • Plants and animals interact in many ways. One major way they interact is by eating one another! Ecosystems are made of food webs that show us how energy moves through an ecosystem. Let’s take a look at a simple food web. • In ocean ecosystems, many plants, like algae and seagrasses, are eaten by small fish. Then, large fish eat small fish and sharks eat the large fish! This food chain helps keep the ocean in balance. The sharks make sure there aren’t too many large fish, the large fish make sure there aren’t too many small fish, and the small fish make sure the seagrass doesn’t grow out of control! But what would happen if we removed a part of this food chain? • If we removed a piece of this food chain, the ecosystem would not be balanced. If the large fish were removed (overfishing), the population of sharks would decrease because they don’t have as much food to eat. The population of small fish would increase because there are fewer animals to eat them and, as the small fish population grows, they would eat all the seagrass that other species depend on. • When the removal of one organism affects the whole ecosystem and the plants and animals that live there, we call this a trophic cascade. This can also occur if we add an organism! Some animals are so important in their ecosystem that, if we removed them, the whole ecosystem would fall apart. These very important species are called keystone species. Ecosystems depend on the keystone species to stay in balance. • Keystone species are often predators, like wolves, jaguars, or sea otters, that keep the populations of smaller animals in check. If we take wolves, for example, without wolves to eat the deer, elk, and other herbivores, their populations would grow and they would overgraze the landscape to the point where it would be challenging for them or any other species to survive there. It is important that we protect all species, big and small, to help keep ecosystems balanced.
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