[Animals] The number of plant animals outnumbers the carnivores

[SnO]

The prevailing impression is that the numbers of plant animals and the beasts that prey on them are directly proportional, but a new study revealed an increase in the number of plant animals at the expense of predatory carnivores, which may pose a long-term threat to wildlife and green spaces.

The study, published by the Journal of Science of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that its findings came from the data of a thousand previous studies on animals, carried out in one thousand and five hundred sites around the world.

 

 

 

The New York Times quoted Ian A. Hutton, a biologist at McGill University, as saying that "a broad survey at this level showed a system that was not known before."

Hutten and his colleagues began their research in a number of sites in Africa, such as the Serengeti and Kalahari, and found a recurring pattern that the number of carnivores did not increase at the same rate as the number of plant animals.

This discovery fueled the curiosity of researchers, who spread across the earth to study environments other than the African environment, and found the same thing.

"Even the microzooplankton that feed on phytoplankton, we find they go in the same direction," Hutten said.

The study said that plant animals (prey) reproduce in a small proportion in crowded environments as a result of limited resources, and since predators attack both large and small animals, the lack of reproduction of plant animals means scarcity of food for predators and thus a decrease in their numbers.

It is hoped that knowing this pattern of reproduction will help researchers monitor ecosystems and identify and protect endangered species.

"If we go to India, for example, it will help us figure out how many tigers there should be in a place," Hutten said.

 

https://www.aljazeera.net/news/miscellaneous/2015/9/5/تفوق-أعداد-الحيوانات-النباتية-على