Not so long ago, wolves roamed nearly all of the United States—red wolves in the South and grey wolves in the North. Wolves have been mostly extricated in all of the United States except for a few small remaining populations. Wolves played a major role in creating a positive affect on the ecosystem by creating biodiversity in certain areas and regions with their mere presence. Without the presence of wolves, many animals and the environment could suffer huge population losses to include extinction. Wolves have helped to shape the landscape of the river by reducing deer population causing vegetation and small animal to thrive from the abundance of food sources. Community ecology and biodiversity level, which relates to interactions among organisms
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Wolves are territorial predators which tend to operate in packs and limit other predators, such as coyotes and cougars. I believe the wolves would create a more balanced ecosystem and help with biodiversity. “Except for coyotes and cougars, most meat eaters actually benefit from having wolves around. Wolf kills can mean more food for grizzlies, eagles, ravens and other scavengers. And species such as foxes, which coyotes once dominated, now enjoy new prosperity. "We're discovering that wolves are excellent engineers of biodiversity,” says Crabtree (Gary Turbak, 1998). Each predator has strengths and weakness which help balance biodiversity and existence. Wolves could thrive in open area due to their speed and stamina while feline animals tend to favor wooded, brushy areas where they can ambush their prey. Habitat preferences, however, often overlap, forcing the competitors to use a more sophisticated sharing system (Gary Turbak, 1998). Plants and animals are interconnected through the food web and each species exists to play a key role in the landscape composition. A species, such as a wolf, is considered a “strongly interactive species” when its absence leads to significant ecosystem changes. This is evident when gray wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park. These types of changes include structural or compositional modifications, alterations in import and export of nutrients, loss of resilience to disturbance, and decreases in native species diversity (Paine). Keystones are species whose activities maintain other species and habitat diversity, and whose those effects are disproportionate to their abundance. The elimination of apex predators destabilizes ecosystems, setting off chain reactions that eventually cascade down the trophic ladder (or food web) to the lowest rung, often reducing habitat complexity and species diversity. Paine coined the term trophic cascade to describe such
Wolves are territorial predators which tend to operate in packs and limit other predators, such as coyotes and cougars. I believe the wolves would create a more balanced ecosystem and help with biodiversity. “Except for coyotes and cougars, most meat eaters actually benefit from having wolves around. Wolf kills can mean more food for grizzlies, eagles, ravens and other scavengers. And species such as foxes, which coyotes once dominated, now enjoy new prosperity. "We're discovering that wolves are excellent engineers of biodiversity,” says Crabtree (Gary Turbak, 1998). Each predator has strengths and weakness which help balance biodiversity and existence. Wolves could thrive in open area due to their speed and stamina while feline animals tend to favor wooded, brushy areas where they can ambush their prey. Habitat preferences, however, often overlap, forcing the competitors to use a more sophisticated sharing system (Gary Turbak, 1998). Plants and animals are interconnected through the food web and each species exists to play a key role in the landscape composition. A species, such as a wolf, is considered a “strongly interactive species” when its absence leads to significant ecosystem changes. This is evident when gray wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park. These types of changes include structural or compositional modifications, alterations in import and export of nutrients, loss of resilience to disturbance, and decreases in native species diversity (Paine). Keystones are species whose activities maintain other species and habitat diversity, and whose those effects are disproportionate to their abundance. The elimination of apex predators destabilizes ecosystems, setting off chain reactions that eventually cascade down the trophic ladder (or food web) to the lowest rung, often reducing habitat complexity and species diversity. Paine coined the term trophic cascade to describe such