ABEL\'S UNIVERSE (General)

by Abel , Thursday, November 17, 2011, 22:36 (4564 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Balance_Maintained: Your example is flawed though. There is no need for predation to balance the number of herbivores to the number of plants. Supply and demand would take care or that in the long term. As herbivores stripped the country side of vegetation, they would move on allowing time for the plants in the area to regrow, fertilized by the waste of the passing herbivores. Any group that did not move on, would starve. Eventually, if the number of Herbivores were too large, they would die off in droves, and the plants would naturally repopulate while the number of herbivores was depleted. There is no need for predators in that simple simulation.

There is also the argument that predators strengthen a species by weeding out the old, the deformed, the weak and the diseased.

A good example of what happens when you introduce a species into an environment where it has no natural predators is Australia and its' rabbit problem. Without going into great detail, rabbits were so successful at being just herbivores that they were wiping out many native species because their presence alone upset the balance of nature.

How many plant and animal species might be extinct because of rabbits? I don't know. But rabbit extermination still costs Australia millions every year as they attempt to control this cute, harmless, little problem. This is but one example among many of how the introduction of one species destroyed another, and obviously, you don't have to be a predator to do it.