Editing Food Chains
Biology: Cambridge International GCSE Supplement, topic 19.2.5
Editing Food Chains
Adding or removing links from food chains can change the balance of a whole ecosystem and have implications for the rest of the food chain.
Removing a link
- For example removing a secondary consumer from the food chain can result in more primary consumers, but fewer tertiary consumers.
- This can sometimes happen if food species are over-harvested (e.g. fish stocks).
Adding a link
- For example introducing a foreign species to a habitat can have disastrous consequences, especially if it has no predators to control their numbers.
- Everything below them in the food chain is consumed more, creating a deficit for other consumers at the same level.
- E.g. lionfish were accidentally introduced into the Caribbean and have seriously damaged other fish populations.