Why the Earth is Green: Trophic Cascades on Land and Water
By Cristina Eisenberg / On August 16th, 2011
We have been discussing the powerful and essential ecological link between apex predators, their prey, and the foods prey eat. Based on the revolutionary ideas of Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin, who in 1960 ingeniously proposed that the world is green because predators limit their plant-eating prey, trophic cascades science has since then explored the consequences of predator removal from ecosystems worldwide.