Named after the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch, which locks the other stones into position and prevents collapse, a keystone species is one that plays a central role in the structure of an ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Beavers<\/a>, for example, physically change the landscape through their dam-building, creating habitats used by other species. And some top predators<\/a> enable diverse vegetation to flourish by controlling the number of grazing animals.<\/p>\n The term does not apply to just any influential organisms. Crucially, keystone species are those that have a disproportionately large effect relative to their abundance. It would not apply to, say, trees or reef-building corals<\/a>, which have a huge effect on ecosystems <\/a>because of their abundance.<\/p>\n According to Robert Paine, the zoologist who coined the phrase ‘keystone species’ in the 1960s, it \u201cwas intended to convey a sense of nature\u2019s dynamic fragility and the unsuspected consequences of removing (or adding) species\u201d.<\/p>\n Paine had experimentally removed ochre starfish<\/a> from areas of rocky shore, which led to mussels<\/a> \u2013 the starfish\u2019s prey \u2013 crowding out other encrusting organisms.<\/p>\n Other keystone species include sea otters<\/a>, which are highly influential in the functioning of kelp forests, and wolves, whose loss from Yellowstone<\/a> \u2013 and subsequent reintroduction \u2013 had dramatic effects on the national park\u2019s ecology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Named after the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch, which locks the other stones into position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-127252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}