Study Sheds New Light on How Species Extinction Affects Complex Ecosystems
Friday, March 3, 2017 - 09:51
in Biology & Nature
Research by the University of Southampton has found that methods used to predict the effect of species extinction on ecosystems could be producing inaccurate results. This is because current thinking assumes that when a species vanishes, its role within an environment is lost too. However, scientists working on a new study have found that when a species, (for example a group of sea creatures), is wiped out by a catastrophic event, other species can change their behaviour to compensate, exploiting the vacant role left behind.