Keystone Species Essay

Keystone species play a large role in each ecosystem, they have the ability to alter their ecosystem or be the reason they completely collapse. Keystone species are the reason that many different species exist, these other species highly depend on the keystone species for survival, if a single keystone species were to go extinct, it is likely for other species populations to decrease. Other species benefit from keystone species in a variety of ways, such as food supply, shelter, or a water source. For example, the prairie dog demonstrates a keystone species because their colonies make small islands of shelter that benefit many different species in their ecosystem. Defenders of Wildlife adds that prairie dogs supply a food source for other animals
Kelp forests are a food source for sea otters, harbor seals, and other fish species. These forests demonstrate shelter for marine mammals during a storm or as a way to escape predators. Nevertheless, sea urchins and other invertebrates roam amongst the kelp forests, feeding off of them. These sea urchins can reach a large enough population to completely eat up entire kelp forests.On the contrary, sea otters, another keystone species, are one of the few marine mammals to consume sea urchins, balancing urchin populations and kelp regrowth. Without sea otters, our kelp forests would be stripped, leaving other species to starve and no safe place for fish to lay their eggs. Exploring Nature informs us of a dramatic change in an ecosystem when sea otters were almost hunted to extinction in the 1700-1800s. Once sea otters became extremely rare, fishermen began to notice change in the ecosystem, where the population of sea urchins increased drastically. The urchins would eat the kelp beds faster than the kelp could resupply itself. This led to a chain reaction, without the sea otters, the kelp beds slowly disappeared, then so did fish