Bio 2.1.4- Explain why ecosystems can be relatively stable over hundreds or thousands of years, even though populations may fluctuate (emphasizing availability of food, availability of shelter, number of predators and disease).
Carrying capacity and natural selection greatly influences avaibility of food, availibility of shelter, number of predators, and disease.
Food: Every ecosystem has food chains. Food chains are a sequence of animals that eat other animans. For example an owl eating a mouse and the mouse eating another organism and so on.
Shelter: As soon as a population exeeds its carrying capacity there will not be enough shelter to go around so natural selection will begin to occur. The population can start to develop diseases in order to keep the population down. Availibility of food will also decrease untill the population is down to size.
Predators: The number of predators in an ecosystem is also a factor in the stability of an ecosystem. The more predators their are the less prey their will be. Once they predators begin to overpopulate natural selection will occur and the population of predators will decrease while the population of prey increases.
Disease: Disease is a factor in the stability of an ecosystem as well. The more disease a species has the more that species decreases.
link to ecosystem lab: http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/ecology/
Tanner