Life on Earth Examples

The number of breeding birds in an equatorial country is 3x higher than the number found in Alaska (Cox et al., 2016)

Panama

Species less diverse in the tropics than in higher latitude temperate regions as most only feed on one type of plant and cannot locate them from a distance so they do best where plant species are dense (Cox et al., 2016)

Aphids

Primary succession occurred on basaltic volcanic lava flows on the island with significant successes by nitrogen fixing alder and the formation of mixed forests (Begon et al., 2006)

Miyake-jime Island, Japan

Many farms were abandoned and moved West with the opening of the frontier in the C19th, regeneration was swift in these areas via natural succession (Begon et al., 2006)

Eastern US

Younger site experienced rapid colonisation with 86% vegetation cover averaging 2.9 metres tall after 23 years, older site had 100% woody cover averaging 13.1 metres tall after 53 years; they saw clustered colonisation with wind-dispersed common ash occurring near seed sources, there were also clusters of oaks resulting from acorn hoarding from birds and rodents (Broughton et al., 2021)

New and Old Wilderness, England

High levels of ammonia are able the thresholds for bryophytes and lichens across 69% of the country (State of Nature, 2023)

Wales

Arctic-Alpine specialist vascular plants have suffered severe declines of over 50% since 1990s due to warmer summers and more frequent droughts, the birds such as the Dotterel dependent on their habitats also decline (State of Nature, 2023)

Scotland

The river basin showed a 25% increases in river discharge between 1960 and 1995 which coincided with expanded agriculture, not precipitation changes (Foley et al., 2005)

Tocantins River, Brazil

It was hypothesized that the species reintroduction would lead a recovery of the aspen by causing elk to avoid foraging in risky areas; however, their predation was unlikely to alter the dress of elk herbivory and the elk population declining would be the key to aspen regeneration (Kauffman et al., 2010)

Yellowstone wolves

Cats were introduced in 1949 and at one stage there were 2000 taking 213 birds a year therefore killing over 400,000 birds a year; the native bird species struggled to survive (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Marion Island

One of the most successful animal groups causing native species and ecosystem changes due to opportunistic foraging and preying on island species; there is a need to expand control and monitoring as they have now been introduced to over 80% of islands (Duron et al., 2017)

Invasive rats

When Cook made landfall in 1778, he brought with him avian malaria carried by mosquitoes; this did not have a major impact until the 1920s but became a limiting factor restructuring abundance and distribution of avian species (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Hawaii

Rising sea temperatures and ecosystem degradation led to a number of mass coral bleaching events from 1998 to 2024, we will likely lose 70-90% of coral reefs globally if warming is not limited to 1.5 degrees (WWF & ZSL, 2024)

Great Barrier Reef

When the species were reintroduced to Yellowstone national park in 1995 they controlled the elk population, allowed aspen to regenerate as well as increasing biodiversity of beavers and improving stream flows; this large impact makes them keystone species (Kauffman et al., 2010)

Yellowstone wolves

Less than 5% of plant communities were able to consistently provide fruit for a broad set of consumers during a period of resource scarcity between 2002-11, this made them keystone species (Diaz-Martin et al., 2014)

Western Amazonian lowland plant communities

When they arrived on the island millions of years ago there was little competition and many empty niches, the finches underwent rapid evolution to fill the niches developing different beak shapes (to feed on a variety of food sources), behaviours and habitat preferences (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Hawaiian honeycreepers

A hotspot with around 10-20,000 species of flowering plants and over 80% are endemic, primates are the main flagship species; it is a priority for conservation due to high levels of endemism (Mittermeier et al., 2002)

Madagascar hotspot

91% of recent species extinctions can be attributed to human activities with habitat loss as the key cause (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Sixth mass extinction event

The species disperse around 345 large seeds per day from 96 species consistently over 1km from parent trees, the loss of them may lead to failures of animal-dispersed species (Ripple et al., 2015)

Congo forest elephants

Browsing of the species helps convert woodland to shrubland to increasing the dry season browsing for smaller herbivores (Ripple et al., 2015)

Botswana elephants

The introduction of rinderpest in the late 1800s decimated this populations causing an increase in plant biomass fueling wildfires in the dry season, when it was eliminated from 1960s through vaccinations and control the species recovered to historically high levels which reduced frequency and intensity of wildfires due to grazing (Estes et al., 2011)

East African wildebeest and buffalo

The species colonised the islands from the South American mainland where each island was an example of a new founder effect as each group carried only a limited sample of the generic diversity of the mainland species; this led to each island seeing the species evolve independently leading to differences in shell shape, neck length and size to form several distinct subspecies on different islands (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Galapagos tortoises

All descended from a common ancestor but isolation on different islands led to different beak shapes and sizes, adaptations to different food sources and the evolution of multiple distinct species (Whittaker & Fernandez-Palacios, 2007)

Darwin’s finches