Antarctica Food Web Fragile

Discover who eats who is eating in the antarctic food web.

Antarctica food web fragile. Antarctica is fascinating from an ecological point of view. Not only is the decline of sea ice impairing polar bear populations by reducing the extent of their primary habitat it is also negatively impacting them via food web effects. I believe that it s called fragile because of how the ice is melting. Why is antarctica fragile.

The findings raise concerns over the future of antarctica s fragile ecosystem which is already threatened by climate change. Scientists believe the most serious dangers to the fragile antarctic food web are far more insidious and long lasting. Antarctica food chains and food webs a simple antarctic food chain is the secret to the success of the baleen whales keep the chain short and transfer as much energy as possible as efficiently as possible. This heavy reliance on a single species makes the antarctic ecosystem an unusually fragile one particularly since many animals including baleen whales such as the humpback fin minke and blue whales eat krill almost exclusively.

You can also ask. For the first time scientists. The impact of climate change on a particular species can ripple through a food web and affect a wide range of other organisms. Whales seals penguins albatross petrels fish squid every animal species living in antarctica depends directly or indirectly on krill for survival.

The loss of sea ice can ultimately affect the entire food web from algae and plankton to fish to mammals. They include the tons of garbage much of it nondegradable dumped overboard. By signing up you ll get thousands of step by step solutions to your homework questions. There are two reasons that they have managed to attain such enormous size well over a hundred tonnes for the largest blue whales and nearing this amount for some other whale species.

Although there are no trees in and around antarctica more than 100 million birds nest and breed there. The findings raise concerns over the future of antarctica s fragile ecosystem which is already threatened by climate change. Microplastics have reached one of the world s most remote food systems a new study has found. A major food source for antarctic fish penguins pelagic seabirds seals and whales krill euphausia superba look like shrimp but weigh just a gram as adults and measure about six centimeters long figure 1.

From krill to killer whales penguins to phytoplankton this continents waters are teeming with life. Skip to navigation. Whales are the largest animals ever to have lived larger even than the largest dinosaurs. If the ice melts all animals that live on it or rely on it for survival will become extinct.

Norwegian for whale food krill aggregate in super swarms that can reach a density of 30 000 individuals per square meter attracting whales which can eat three tons of krill in a single feeding and fisheries which net on average 100 000 metric tons per year. The arctic food web is complex.