Predators and prey

• Predators and prey in an ecosystem:

  • The living organisms in a particular area, together with the non-living components of the environment
  • Predators are animals that hunt, kill, and eat other animals for food
  • Prey are organisms that predators kill for food
  • In a healthy, balanced ecosystem, the numbers of predators and prey remain fairly constant
  • Changes in predator or prey numbers could be due to abiotic factors (non-living elements) like climate, temperature, water, and soil type, or biotic factors (living elements) like new predators or pathogens
• Predator-prey cycles:

  • The numbers of predators and prey in certain ecosystems, like the Canadian Lynx and hare, change in a regular cycle
  • Recorded over many years, these cycles show characteristic repeating patterns
  • Graphs show that there is almost always more prey than predators
  • Patterns include:
  • Number of predators increases because there is more prey
  • Number of prey reduces because there are more predators
  • Number of predators reduces because there is less prey