AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Overexploitation means harvesting species from the wild at rates faster than natural populations can recover. Overfishing and overhunting are both types of overexploitation. Currently, about a third of the world’s endangered vertebrates are threatened by overexploitation.

Detailed explanation-2: -Often overexploitation occurs when natural populations are harvested for food. A classic example was the persecution of the passenger pigeon, which once was the most abundant bird in North America.

Detailed explanation-3: -The unsustainable use of natural resources and overexploitation, which occurs when harvesting exceeds reproduction of wild plant and animal species, continues to be a major threat to biodiversity.

Detailed explanation-4: -Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed (SER and Policy Working Group 2002).

Detailed explanation-5: -Keystone species have low functional redundancy. This means that if the species were to disappear from the ecosystem, no other species would be able to fill its ecological niche. The ecosystem would be forced to radically change, allowing new and possibly invasive species to populate the habitat.