Competition in an Ecosystem
Competition in an Ecosystem: An animal in the Safari
By Nadezhda Blot 801
ROAR! Hello. My name is Rafas and I am a lion. I live in the South Africa safari along with my beautiful family of two cubs and my wife. The safari can be a dangerous place to live for any animal, even a lion. Let me tell you a little bit about our survival system here in the safari. There are many animals in the safari such as zebras, leopards, cheetahs, and deer. We all have different niches or roles that we play in the ecosystem. The lion’s niche is to be a predator. We hunt other animals like deer, and zebras. Without these organisms we will not be able to survive because they are our food suppliers. However, we are not the only ones that survive on the organisms. Cheetahs, tigers, and leopards are also predators, and since there aren’t that many options, we all have to share our resources. This sometimes leads to competition in the ecosystem. So far we have been equally sharing the resources that we all need and not one species population has drastically dropped. However, if we were competing there might be a chance where one species can be entirely robbed of their resources. We call this the principle of competitive exclusion. This would definitely put the specie with no resources into a drastic plummet into extinction. There are also different types of competition. Interspecies is when we compete with other organisms like I have just explained. However, there is also intraspiecies. This is when we compete with one another for resources. Once I had to fight a lion for have of a zebra because he wanted to eat the entire zebra himself. This shows greed and is not respected in our economy. My family stayed hungry that night because it wasn’t enough for them and they needed more. If they lived another few days like this, they would surely start losing weight, strength and eventually may die. Competition is very important in our lives in the safari. If we are not careful we might be
By Nadezhda Blot 801
ROAR! Hello. My name is Rafas and I am a lion. I live in the South Africa safari along with my beautiful family of two cubs and my wife. The safari can be a dangerous place to live for any animal, even a lion. Let me tell you a little bit about our survival system here in the safari. There are many animals in the safari such as zebras, leopards, cheetahs, and deer. We all have different niches or roles that we play in the ecosystem. The lion’s niche is to be a predator. We hunt other animals like deer, and zebras. Without these organisms we will not be able to survive because they are our food suppliers. However, we are not the only ones that survive on the organisms. Cheetahs, tigers, and leopards are also predators, and since there aren’t that many options, we all have to share our resources. This sometimes leads to competition in the ecosystem. So far we have been equally sharing the resources that we all need and not one species population has drastically dropped. However, if we were competing there might be a chance where one species can be entirely robbed of their resources. We call this the principle of competitive exclusion. This would definitely put the specie with no resources into a drastic plummet into extinction. There are also different types of competition. Interspecies is when we compete with other organisms like I have just explained. However, there is also intraspiecies. This is when we compete with one another for resources. Once I had to fight a lion for have of a zebra because he wanted to eat the entire zebra himself. This shows greed and is not respected in our economy. My family stayed hungry that night because it wasn’t enough for them and they needed more. If they lived another few days like this, they would surely start losing weight, strength and eventually may die. Competition is very important in our lives in the safari. If we are not careful we might be