Biologically speaking, keystone species have an outsized impact on their natural environments compared to their biomass or abundance. For instance, wolves exert considerable control over prey species like deer and rabbits while helping regulate ecosystems through their activity as nutrient vectors.
Kelp forests
Robert Paine made an important ecological discovery while surveying a small patch of ocean in Washington state. When an individual species goes extinct, its absence can have far-reaching repercussions for an ecosystem, and this phenomenon is known as keystone species. These creatures don’t always dominate an ecosystem’s fauna but play outsized roles within it due to low functional redundancy – meaning no other organism could fill in their ecological niche should their absence occur.
Kelp forests offer shelter and food to many underwater species, from snails to fish, invertebrates, and sea otters. Kelp also acts as an essential nursery for herring that lay their eggs upon its blades and serves as a natural barrier by slowing water’s movement to ensure it doesn’t move unnecessarily into unsuitable habitats.
Unfortunately, marine ecosystems that rely heavily on kelp forests are threatened worldwide. Rising water temperatures caused by climate change and other human activities prevent kelp forests from expanding at their usual rates, shortening and weakening them over time. Furthermore, overfishing and pollution may disrupt their delicate balance and threaten marine organisms that depend on them for sustenance.
Dinoflagellate algae have been blamed for sea star wasting syndrome, an epidemic that has decimated populations reliant on kelp forests for shelter and sustenance. Hodin’s research is intended to understand this disease so they can restore healthy sea stars and kelp forests to health – with support from others, including more conservation measures, including expanding marine protected areas as they disappear globally.
Krill
Planet Earth’s ecosystems are alive with life. Each species contributes to the diversity and structure of its habitat. Still, some stand out as keystone species with much more significant impacts than others on their environments than their relative abundance or biomass. Keystone species may include predators, herbivores, pollinators, or engineers, which exert top-down or bottom-up forces that alter ecosystem dynamics while shaping relationships among other species.
Keystone species can include anything from animals and plants to bacteria and fungi; they typically act as predators that control populations of other species to maintain ecosystem stability and diversity, serving as vital linkage species between various components in an ecosystem. If keystone species disappear from an ecosystem, its collapse can be catastrophic.
Pisaster ochraceus, an essential player in tidal ecosystems in Washington state’s northwestern corner, was removed by ecology Robert Paine and caused dramatic changes. Without Pisaster’s predatory effects on other plant and animal species, mussels quickly outcompeted all others, prompting Paine to coin the term “keystone species” for these creatures that exert such an outsized impact upon their environments.
Krill are an abundant marine crustacean found across most oceans worldwide and serve as food sources for aquatic animals such as sharks and whales. While they can be found at all depths, shallower waters with lower salinity tend to attract them more. Krill follow a daily vertical migration routine during which they spend their days feeding in deeper waters before rising at night to the surface to feed at surface waters; their swimming activity depends on whether their stomachs have become full (satiety causing less active swimming activity from them to conserve energy).
Bees
Earth’s ecosystems are home to various organisms, including plants and microorganisms, but a particular standout. These “keystone species” help preserve biodiversity by regulating populations or altering habitats to maintain stability and resilience within their respective ecosystems. They act as vital sources of overall health and diversity in these environments, often as the backbone of food webs.
Any living organism can be considered a keystone species, with most being animals that play an instrumental role in their ecosystem’s food webs. Such animals include predators, herbivores, and seed dispersers known as keystone predators. Wolf populations serve as keystone predators by controlling prey populations from overcrowding ecological niches; additionally, they serve as nutrient vectors by transporting food sources from distant ecosystems into local ones.
Players looking to bring bees into their Minecraft world should build a hive near a flower, enabling the bees to gather pollen quickly before returning home to their hive. Oak or birch trees also produce bee nests after some time; additionally, they can also be grown in The Nether or The End, which don’t experience day/night cycles, allowing bees to work around the clock.
To create a concept map, brainstorm ideas and write them down on paper. Next, organize these ideas according to importance and relevance, using crosslinks between concepts to illustrate relationships between ideas. Finally, fine-tune your map until it accurately represents all relationships identified by you.
Sea stars
Sea stars (also called starfish or Asteroidea, an order of Echinodermata) are marine invertebrates with long, rounded arms enclosing an indistinct central disk. Sea stars can be found throughout every ocean, from warm tropical zones to polar regions, intertidal zones, and deep seafloor environments; they are not fishes but part of their class, like sea urchins and sand dollars.
These organisms, often called keystone species, exert an outsized impact on habitat health and biodiversity compared with their abundance or biomass; eliminating one could significantly change an ecosystem.
One of the first experiments demonstrating this concept was conducted in the 1960s by researcher Robert Paine, who disturbed an ecosystem on Tatoosh Island off Washington State and observed how quickly organisms responded. He kept that losing one sea star named Pisaster ochraceus caused ripples to ripple through the food web, giving rise to keystone species theory.
As with other echinoderms, sea stars aren’t social animals per se; however, they assemble for protection or when feeding on bivalves like mussels and oysters. Feeding involves attaching themselves to bivalve shells using suction feet, opening them, inserting their stomachs inside, digesting what’s inside, and then discarding their waste into their stomachs for digestion by the starfish themselves. Most species feature five arms; however, some can boast 10, 20, or 40 components. They feature bony skin for protection from predators, with bright colors helping scare away potential attackers – also regenerate lost or damaged parts, allowing them to live happily ever after in many different habitats, from rocky shores to kelp beds and coral reefs!
Seaweeds
Seaweeds (macroalgae) are large marine plants floating on seas, lakes, and streams that provide food and protect marine ecosystems. Seaweed is also commonly used as an additive or thickener in processed foods as an essential binding/thickening agent.
Keystone species refers to any organism with an outsized impact on its ecosystem relative to its relative biomass or abundance. Animals such as predators, herbivores, and pollinators may act as keystones; plants and fungi also qualify. Such organisms have low functional redundancy; their absence would quickly alter their ecosystem in ways often with adverse consequences.
Robert Paine first coined the term “keystone species” when discussing his work on North American tidal pools and was particularly intrigued by sea stars as keystone species. When removed physically from stretches of beach, mussels quickly outcompeted other species and led to significant disruptions of ecosystem balance.
Dividing the class into five cooperative learning groups. Give each of them one of the clue cards to review and discuss before asking each one to select a species of seaweed or plant from among those presented – once decided, have them share with the class! If their guess was correct, point out some distinctive features about it (for instance, not having stems, leaves, or roots but instead having flat undifferentiated bodies called thallus and air-filled sacs known as floats instead of seeds).
