• Question: what animals afect each other in the sea/ocean

    Asked by to Thon, James, Natalie, Shaylon on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Shaylon Stolk

      Shaylon Stolk answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      That’s a complicated question! One example of how animals influence each other in marine ecosystems is the ‘food web’. This describes the predator-prey relationships between everything from tiny plankton to giant squid. It’s different for each ecosystem.
      Here’s a more in-depth article on the topic:
      http://www.afbini.gov.uk/sots-foodwebs.pdf
      You can Google the references at the end if you want to learn even more about marine food webs.

    • Photo: James Bell

      James Bell answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Generally animals will affect each other if they live in the same area and/or have similar feeding strategies. An ecosystem is the combined product of all of the animals of an area and their physical environment.

      Typical animal interactions include:

      Predation
      Reproduction/ Courtship
      Competition (between other species and members of your own species)
      Territorial behaviour and other types of aggression

    • Photo: Natalie Pilakouta

      Natalie Pilakouta answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Another way in which animals can affect each other in the ocean is that they can cooperate! For example, many different species of fish sometimes “school” together, which means that they swim in groups. They do this because it reduces their chances of getting eaten be a predator. Predators often get confused when there is a very big group of fish swimming around (called the confusion effect). Also, because there are so many fish that a predator could attack, each single fish has a smaller chance of getting eaten (called the dilution effect).

Comments