Ecology articles

What determines reproductive strategies?

Reproductive strategy is not a conscious choice an organism makes but rather the evolved suite of behaviors, physiologic...

How does energy flow through food webs?

The passage of energy through the living components of an environment is a fundamental concept in ecology, dictating the...

What limits population size in nature?

Populations in the wild rarely grow indefinitely. An unchecked population, given infinite resources, would exhibit expon...

What causes trophic cascades?

The concept of a trophic cascade describes how changes occurring at one level of a food web can send reverberations down...

How do predators regulate prey populations?

The presence of a predator in an ecosystem is not merely a matter of watching a dramatic chase; it is a fundamental inte...

How does habitat fragmentation affect species?

The transformation of continuous natural space into a collection of isolated remnants—that is the essence of habitat fra...