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What Is The Animal At The Top Of The Food Chain

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Predator at the top of a food chain

The king of beasts is one of Africa'south noon state predators.[1]

The saltwater crocodile is the largest living reptile[two] and the dominant predator throughout its range.[3]

The not bad white shark (bottom) was originally considered the apex predator of the ocean; however, the orca (top) has proven to be a predator of the shark.

An apex predator, also known as a top predator, is a predator at the acme of a food chain, without natural predators.[a] [5] [half dozen]

Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, pregnant that they occupy the highest trophic levels. Nutrient chains are often far shorter on land, usually limited to beingness secondary consumers – for case, wolves prey by and large upon large herbivores (chief consumers), which consume plants (primary producers). The apex predator concept is practical in wildlife management, conservation and ecotourism.

Apex predators have a long evolutionary history, dating at least to the Cambrian period when animals such every bit Anomalocaris dominated the seas.

Humans have for many centuries interacted with apex predators including the wolf, birds of prey and cormorants to hunt game animals, birds, and fish respectively. More recently, humans accept started interacting with apex predators in new ways. These include interactions via ecotourism, such as with the tiger shark, and through rewilding efforts, such as the proposed reintroduction of the lynx.

Ecological roles [edit]

[edit]

Apex predators affect prey species' population dynamics and populations of other predators, both in aquatic and in terrestrial ecosystems. Not-native predatory fish, for case, have sometimes devastated formerly dominant predators. A lake manipulation study plant that when the not-native smallmouth bass was removed, lake trout, the suppressed native apex predator, diversified its prey selection and increased its trophic level.[8] Equally a terrestrial example, the annoy, an apex predator, preys upon and also competes with the hedgehog, a mesopredator, for food such as insects, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and the eggs of footing-nesting birds. Removal of badgers (in a trial investigating bovine tuberculosis) caused hedgehog densities to more than double.[nine] Predators that exert a peak-down control on organisms in their community are oft considered keystone species.[x] Humans are not considered noon predators because their diets are typically diverse, although homo trophic levels increase with consumption of meat.[xi]

Effects on ecosystem [edit]

Apex predators tin have profound effects on ecosystems, equally the consequences of both controlling prey density and restricting smaller predators, and may be capable of self-regulation.[12] They are central to the performance of ecosystems, the regulation of disease, and the maintenance of biodiversity.[13] When introduced to subarctic islands, for case, Arctic foxes' predation of seabirds has been shown to turn grassland into tundra.[14] Such broad-ranging effects on lower levels of an ecosystem are termed trophic cascades. The removal of top-level predators, oft through human agency, can cause or disrupt trophic cascades.[fifteen] [16] [17] For instance, reduction in the population of sperm whales, apex predators with a partial trophic level of 4.7, by hunting has acquired an increase in the population of big squid, trophic level over 4 (carnivores that eat other carnivores).[xviii] This issue, called mesopredator release,[19] occurs in terrestrial and marine ecosystems; for case, in North America, the ranges of all apex carnivores have contracted whereas those of 60% of mesopredators take grown in the past two centuries.[twenty]

Conservation [edit]

The wolf is both an apex predator and a keystone species, affecting its prey'due south behaviour and the wider ecosystem.

Because apex predators have powerful furnishings on other predators, on herbivores, and on plants, they can be important in nature conservation.[21] Humans take hunted many apex predators shut to extinction, merely in some parts of the world these predators are now returning.[22] They are increasingly threatened by climate change. For case, the polar comport requires extensive areas of ocean water ice to hunt its prey, typically seals, only climate change is shrinking the ocean ice of the Arctic, forcing polar bears to fast on land for increasingly long periods.[23]

Dramatic changes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem were recorded afterward the greyness wolf, both an noon predator and a keystone species (i with a big upshot on its ecosystem), was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 equally a conservation measure out. Elk, the wolves' primary prey, became less abundant and changed their behavior, freeing riparian zones from constant grazing and allowing willows, aspens and cottonwoods to flourish, creating habitats for beaver, moose and scores of other species.[24] In addition to their effect on casualty species, the wolves' presence also affected i of the park'south vulnerable species, the grizzly comport: emerging from hibernation, having fasted for months, the bears chose to scavenge wolf kills,[25] peculiarly during the autumn equally they prepared to hide once more.[26] The grizzly bear gives birth during hibernation, and then the increased nutrient supply is expected to produce an increase in the numbers of cubs observed.[27] Dozens of other species, including eagles, ravens, magpies, coyotes and black bears have also been documented as scavenging from wolf kills within the park.[28]

Human trophic level [edit]

Humans sometimes live by hunting other animals for food and materials such as fur, sinew, and bone, as in this walrus hunt in the Chill, merely their status as apex predators is debated.

Ecologists accept debated whether humans are noon predators. For instance, Sylvain Bonhommeau and colleagues argued in 2013 that across the global food web, a fractional human trophic level (HTL) can be calculated as the mean trophic level of every species in the human diet, weighted past the proportion which that species forms in the diet. This analysis gives an average HTL of 2.21, varying betwixt ii.04 (for Burundi, with a 96.seven% plant-based diet) and 2.57 (for Iceland, with 50% meat and fish, 50% plants). These values are comparable to those of non-apex predators such as the anchovy or pig.[eleven]

Still, Peter D. Roopnarine criticised Bonhommeau's arroyo in 2014, arguing that humans are apex predators, and that the HTL was based on terrestrial farming where indeed humans have a depression trophic level, mainly eating producers (crop plants at level 1) or primary consumers (herbivores at level 2), which as expected places humans at a level slightly above 2. Roopnarine instead calculated the position of humans in two marine ecosystems, a Caribbean area coral reef and the Benguela system near Due south Africa. In these systems, humans mainly swallow predatory fish and have a fractional trophic level of 4.65 and 4.5 respectively, which in Roopnarine's view makes those humans apex predators.[b] [29]

In 2021, Miki Ben-Dor and colleagues compared human biological science to that of animals at various trophic levels. Using metrics as diverse as tool employ and acerbity of the stomach, they concluded that humans evolved as noon predators, diversifying their diets in response to the disappearance of the megafauna that had one time been their primary source of food.[30]

Evolutionary history [edit]

Apex predators are idea to accept existed since at least the Cambrian period, around 500 million years ago. Extinct species cannot be directly determined to exist apex predators as their behaviour cannot exist observed, and clues to ecological relationships, such every bit bite marks on bones or shells, practise not form a complete picture. However, indirect testify such as the absenteeism of whatever discernible predator in an environment is suggestive. Anomalocaris was an aquatic apex predator, in the Cambrian. Its mouthparts are clearly predatory, and there were no larger animals in the seas at that time.[31]

Cannibal theropod dinosaurs including Allosaurus [32] and Tyrannosaurus [33] have been described as noon predators, based on their size, morphology, and dietary needs.

A Permian shark, Triodus sessilis, was discovered containing two amphibians (Archegosaurus decheni and Cheliderpeton latirostre), one of which had consumed a fish, Acanthodes bronni, showing that the shark had lived at a trophic level of at least 4.[c] [34]

Among more contempo fossils, the sabre-tooth cats, like Smilodon, are considered to take been noon predators in the Cenozoic.[35]

Interactions with humans [edit]

Dogs accept been used in hunting for many centuries, as in this 14th century French depiction of a boar hunt.

Hunting [edit]

Humans hunted with noon predators in the grade of wolves, and in turn with domestic dogs, for some twoscore,000 years; this collaboration may accept helped modern humans to outcompete the Neanderthals.[36] [37] Humans still chase with dogs, which take often been bred as gun dogs to point to, flush out, or retrieve prey.[38] The Portuguese Water Canis familiaris was used to drive fish into nets.[39] Several breeds of dog have been used to chase large prey such equally deer and wolves.[40]

Eagles and falcons, which are apex predators, are used in falconry, hunting birds or mammals.[41] Tethered cormorants, also peak predators,[42] accept been used to catch fish.[43]

Ecotourism [edit]

Tiger sharks are popular ecotourism subjects, but their ecosystems may be affected by the food provided to attract them.

Ecotourism sometimes relies on apex predators to concenter business.[44] [45] Tour operators may in event make up one's mind to intervene in ecosystems, for example by providing food to attract predators to areas that tin can conveniently be visited.[44] This in turn tin have effects on predator population and therefore on the wider ecosystem.[44] As a result, provisioning of species such every bit the tiger shark is controversial, but its effects are not well established by empirical evidence.[44] Other affected apex predators include big cats and crocodiles.[45]

Rewilding [edit]

The reintroduction of predators similar the lynx is attractive to conservationists, but alarming to farmers.

In some densely populated areas like the British Isles, all the large native predators like the wolf, comport, wolverine and lynx have become locally extinct, assuasive herbivores such every bit deer to multiply unchecked except by hunting.[46] In 2015, plans were made to reintroduce lynx to the counties of Norfolk, Cumbria, and Northumberland in England, and Aberdeenshire in Scotland as role of the rewilding movement.[47] The reintroduction of large predators is controversial, in part because of concern among farmers for their livestock.[47] Conservationists such every bit Paul Lister propose instead to permit wolves and bears to hunt their prey in a "managed surroundings" on large fenced reserves.[47]

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ Zoologists mostly exclude parasites from trophic levels as they are (often much) smaller than their hosts, and individual species with multiple hosts at unlike life-cycle stages would occupy multiple levels. Otherwise they would often be at the meridian level, above apex predators.[4]
  2. ^ However, humans had a network trophic level (NTL) of four.27 in the coral reef system, compared to an NTL of 4.viii for the blacktip shark in the same system. Therefore, humans were not the topmost apex predator in that location.[29]
  3. ^ Its trophic level would exist exactly iv if the fish's prey were pure herbivores, higher if the prey were themselves carnivorous.

References [edit]

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  44. ^ a b c d Hammerschlag, Neil; Gallagher, Austin J.; Wester, Julia; Luo, Jiangang; Ault, Jerald Due south. (2012). "Don't bite the manus that feeds: assessing ecological impacts of provisioning ecotourism on an apex marine predator". Functional Environmental. 26 (three): 567–576. doi:ten.1111/j.1365-2435.2012.01973.10.
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  46. ^ Jones, Lucy. "The rewilding plan that would return Britain to nature". BBC. Retrieved 6 June 2018. wolves, bears and lynx roamed the country. ... Humans chopped down the trees to make space for farms, and hunted the large animals to extinction, leaving plant-eaters to decimate the country'south flora. Britain is now one of the few countries in the world that doesn't have top predators.
  47. ^ a b c Lister, Paul (28 Apr 2015). "Bring on a few more apex predators". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-11. Retrieved 14 March 2018.

External links [edit]

  • The Ecological Function of Apex Predators: talk by Prof. James Estes (UC Santa Cruz)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator

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