Word: ecosystems
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...scientific community and the world at large do not act quickly enough to reverse the trend, there will be an ecological catastrophe. We humans have come to be "nature's most fearsome predators," but what will happen when there is hardly anything left to keep the ecosystem in balance? FRED CESAR Fort Lauderdale...
Sharks play a crucial role in keeping aquatic wildlife in balance. Scientists now understand that the ocean ecosystem has been evolving over hundreds of millions of years as an integrated whole--a biological machine in which each component has a vital function. For most sharks, that function is to serve as what biologists call an apex predator, the ocean equivalent of a lion or tiger or bear. Not only do they keep prey populations in check, but they also tend to eat the slowest, weakest and least wily individuals. In so doing, they improve the target species' gene pool, leaving...
...shark species lay eggs; the rest bear live young, and some of these carry their young just as mammals do, with an umbilical cord connecting the fetus to the uterus.) For the next 12 months or so, the baby hammerheads are an integral part of the region's ecosystem...
...happens, the university's shark-research lab is located on Coconut Island, right in the middle of the bay, so Lowe can study them easily. In order to understand how much impact a hammerhead has on the bay ecosystem, Lowe is trying to learn how much energy it expends and how much food that takes. He has designed a miniature sensor that attaches to the baby shark's back and registers every beat of the tail as the shark swims along. By feeding the babies a precise amount of fish, then putting them in a tank with constantly flowing water...
...gone and, by counting its tail beats, how much energy it has used. "We still have a lot of data to gather," he says, "but once we really understand what role the hammerhead pups play here, we can use that to begin understanding how adults fit into the ecosystem of the open ocean...