IMMUNOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -In balance. Predators are essential to ecosystems because they regulate prey populations. Without predators, prey can become over-abundant. This can result in damage to local plants, as well as disease outbreaks that can spread to domesticated animals.

Detailed explanation-2: -Population Explosions The most obvious result of the removal of the top predators in an ecosystem is a population explosion in the prey species. Predators keep herbivore populations in check.

Detailed explanation-3: -Predation can have large effects on prey populations and on community structure. Predators can increase diversity in communities by preying on competitive dominant species or by reducing consumer pressure on foundation species.

Detailed explanation-4: -As the prey population decreases, the predator population begins to decrease as well. The prey population is a limiting factor. A limiting factor limits the growth or development of an organism, population, or process.

Detailed explanation-5: -Many ecologists think that predators can boost biodiversity by hunting just enough of one prey species to make room in the ecosystem for another competing prey species to coexist. But predators can also harm biodiversity by hunting prey species to extinction.

Detailed explanation-6: -trophic cascade, an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in dramatic changes in ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling.