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How does an ecosystem collapse?

Introduction

Conservation biologists think about the interactions between predators and prey, parasites and hosts, and herbivores and plants as an ecological network.

Here, you can see a simplified version of a coral reef network (real networks would have thousands of species and tens of thousands of connections!). The purpose is to show you what happens when key species are lost from ecosystems. Try changing the toggles at the bottom of the screen to remove each of the coral species.

Toggle switches for food chain

Remove Coral 1

Remove Coral 2

Remove Coral 3