The impact of animals going extinct or disappearing.

Imagine a biome where predator and prey keep each other in check. If there's many prey, the predator will have a lot of food and their population will increase significantly. As a result more prey will be eaten and their population will decline. This means the increased population of lions will go down again and this goes on and on. Of course the amount of prey, which are mostly herbivores, will also affect plant life and growth.

Let's say the biome is a forest. If the wolves disappear, the deer population will grow quickly. They spread out and feed on all the plants around. because of this plants are being eaten faster than they can grow and the low growing ones will disappear.

These plants are a habitat of their own, they house all different kinds of species and other animals lose their food supply as well. Plants and their roots also keep the forest floor together which means the soil becomes loose and rain will wash it away making the water dirtier.

Next to the rivers, the soil is so weak that the river banks break off. The streams get wider and shallower which means fish populations decline as well.

You can see the disappearance of 1 species has a domino effect on the entire biome. In only a few steps the loss of a land predator changes life in the rivers. I could keep going and give you more consequences about this one example but I think you get it now.

Written by: Mylan Loyens

References:

Wolves and the Ecology of Fear: Can Predation Risk Structure Ecosystems?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221959407_Wolves_and_the_Ecology_of_Fear_Can_Predation_Risk_Structure_Ecosystems