New Research on Sea Urchins Challenges Long-held Assumptions About Marine Reserves noozhawk.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from noozhawk.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
E-Mail
Deprive a mountain range of its wolves, and soon the burgeoning deer population will strip its slopes bare. I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer, wrote ecologist Aldo Leopold in his landmark 1949 title A Sand County Almanac.
Leopold proposed that predators keep herbivore populations in check to the benefit of an ecosystem s plant life. Remove one link in the food chain, and the effects cascade down its length. The idea of a trophic cascade has since become a mainstay in conservation ecology, with sea urchins as a prime example just off the California coast.