Networks in Natural Food Chains – Blue Macaw Extinction
Main Article Used: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180219155019.htm
Supporting Articles: https://wildfor.life/species/hyacinth-macaw, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-spixs-macaw-parrot-that-inspired-rio-is-extinct-in-wild/)
In the natural world, each creature plays a vital part in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. The idea of “cascading extinction” is derived from this balance, stipulating that the loss of a species can cause a domino effect that effect species both above and below their position on the food web. Especially now, extinctions due to climate change and human influence are causing increasingly noticeable impacts on the natural world. Within the past week, the blue macaw parrot has just gone extinct in the wild. While blue macaws were not top predators in their ecosystem, subsisting off mostly nuts and berries, their void in the food web equates to a loss of food for predators and seed dispersers for the plants that they consumed. The first article notes how the loss of one species might not directly cause immediate extinctions around them, but the gap increases the risk of “cascading extinction” nonetheless. In an experiment performed by the University of Exeter, researchers observed the consequences of removing a species of wasp from a community of plants and insects. The result of removing the wasp was secondary extinctions of other species that were indirectly connected to the wasp. This demonstrates that the loss of one species can detrimentally effect another.
While the loss of the blue macaw is very recent and there are currently no visible consequences of the loss, it is highly likely that their previous ecosystem will feel the impacts in the future. This scenario is an example of a heavily studied network in the natural world. Researchers take data on how each organism influences the other and when extinctions like this happen, they are able to predict the consequences. Removing the macaw from the food web is similar to removing a connecting node and its associated edges in a network. This can result in the loss of a bridge, breaking one component into two. While this is not likely in the natural world, especially in this case because a jungle is one of the most interconnected food chains, it still has obvious ties to what the studies of networks entails.