Alfred Gregory

One day at school Alfred Gregory McAlfred III, Alfred for short, the cleaner shrimp was talking to his classmate Bobbie, who is also a cleaner shrimp. All throughout the school day Bobbie was bragging about how she was so much smarter than Alfred because she knew so much about the coral reef and how all the different organisms interact. This did not make Alfred happy so he went to ask his wise grandfather, Alfred Gregory McAlfred Senior, about how all of these things work so that he could could prove to Bobbie that she was not smarter than him.
“Hey Grandpapa Alfred, what do you know about our ecosystem?” Alfred asks. His grandpa thinks for a minute before he responds. “That’s a hard question to answer, there are a lot of very different complicated things going on in our ecosystem as we speak,” he says, “Here, why don’t you walk around with me while I show you how the coral reef works.” First he brings Alfred to the coral and tells him look carefully so that he can see the algae growing on it. “You see the algae is growing on the coral which may not seem like anything worth noting but it is actually a very important part of the ecosystem. Both the algae and the coral are able to gain nutrients from one another that is important to the survival of both organisms, since both organisms benefit from this relation …show more content…
“Yes, these limiting factors add up to what is called a carrying capacity. A carrying capacity is the maximum amount of how many of a specific organism can survive in a particular area. This however is not something that is set in stone, carrying capacity can actually change as a result of changes in the limiting factors in our ecosystem. For example, if more coral was produced, there was more food, and less predators around our carrying capacity would be higher than it is now.” “Wow thank you Grandpapa! I can’t believe how much you were able to teach me about the coral