A keystone species is a species that fulfills a very important role in its habitat. When a keystone species is eradicated from the habitat, that habitat undergoes extreme changes. The loss of a keystone species can cause other species to leave the environment and create a domino effect of outcomes. The loss of any organism in a habitat messes up the systems and relationships between other creatures and the balance of the habitat suffers. Many keystone species are predators who are essential to their habitat because they control the population of their prey. Without them, the prey would overpopulate and consume too many resources. When the resources are consumed, other species can no longer live. However, herbivores can be keystone species as well. One example of this is the African elephant, or Loxodonta africana.
The African elephant is the world’s largest land mammal. They live in small family groups and have been known to grieve over dead family members. These creatures are in a state of vulnerability, they aren’t endangered yet, but they are close. This species is at high risk for becoming extinct in the wild.
In African savannas such as the Serengeti plains region that covers parts of Kenya and Tanzania, elephants …show more content…
These trees stay very small because The African elephant’s keystone role is to eat and maintain them. They pull baby trees out of the ground so that they can eat the roots. If they miss a tree and it grows larger, they can also simply knock it down, try to rip it from the ground, or chew all of it’s bark off and kill it if it is too big to yank from the earth. The elephants are also able to maintain the size of trees by eating the parts of the branch that support growth. Elephants eat mainly grasses, fruit, bark and roots, and they eat a lot. Adult elephants can eat 300 pounds of food in a day. This makes them very effective at their job of keeping the trees in the habitat in