2024-01-26 08:42:27
Par Vincent Bordenave
Published on 01/25/2024 at 8:00 p.m., Updated on 01/26/2024 at 09:42 a.m.
Acacia trees provide shelter used by lions to stalk and ambush plains zebras. Victoria Zero
DECRYPTION – In Kenya, invasive insects have disrupted the balance of the ecosystem and indirectly disrupted the eating habits of predators.
This is an article that could soberly be titled “The lion and the ant”, as the laws which govern the balance of ecosystems surpass the imagination of the authors. This story, revealed to us by scientists in the journal Science, mixing ants, acacias, elephants, lions and zebras could well have been imagined by Jean de La Fontaine. A fable which tells us how a small ant with a big head, arriving in the Kenyan savannah in the heart of the Ol Pejeta reserve, will disturb the one who sits at the top of the food chain by protecting its prey, through the largest terrestrial mammal .
« It’s a very nice way of showing the complexity of scientific ecology, comments Franck Courchamp, conservation biologist and research director at CNRS. Thousands of species interact with each other, we modify one link and the entire chain is disrupted. » While it is quite easy to understand some…
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#Lions #unexpected #collateral #victims #war #ants