If These 3 Keystone Species Were To Disappear Their Ecosystems Would Collapse

Ecosystems are extremely fragile and complex and the smallest changes can throw them off balance. Most plants and animals play an important role in their ecosystem but of course some species are more important than others. In today's video i will be focusing on animals that fit into two categories and these categories are keystone species and umbrella species.

Umbrella species are species selected for making conservation-related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community of its habitat.

A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance.

If some important keystone species and umbrella species were to disappear then there would undoubtedly be some extinctions and i will be going through few of these scenarios today.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:12 Salmon
4:04 Sea Otters
6:15 American Alligator

Attributions

Salmon images:
Knepp, Timothy
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Public domain
NYS DEC
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nysdec/
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
Lake Clark National Park & Preserve
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lakecla...
Public domain

Salmon footage:
TheBradypusPygmaeus
   / @thebradypuspygmaeus  
Doug Jones - Nature Videos
https://vimeo.com/user32335610
CC BY-ND

Salmon fishing graphs:
Epipelagic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon#...
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Sea otter images:
"Mike" Michael L. Baird
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Attribution 2.0 Generic
Robin Gwen Agarwal (ANudibranchMom on iNaturalist)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/3031443...
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic
National Marine Sanctuaries
https://www.flickr.com/photos/onms/
Attribution 2.0 Generic
Bureau of Land Management California
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmcali...
Public domain

Sea otter footage:
Ingrid Taylar Foto
https://vimeo.com/user10014548
CC BY-ND

American alligator images:
judygva
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Attribution 2.0 Generic

I have edited and adapted some of these clips and images.
Creative commons licences: https://creativecommons.org/share-you...

Thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed :)

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyston...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrell...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_otter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelp_fo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...