Keystone Species - An Introduction



Next time you walk through a stone or brick archway, look up.  At the top center, you'll see a wedge-shaped piece that stands out from the others.   This is the keystone.  It is the piece that completes the arch and holds all the pieces together in formation.  It may not be the biggest piece or the piece with the most intricate carving, though it could be either or both of those, but it is the piece without which the arch would no longer exist as an arch.

Now, think of the arch as an ecosystem.  Each piece of stone is a species.  Without them, the arch may take on a slightly different appearance.  But without the keystone species, it would no longer resemble the same arch at all.  It might even crumble to the ground.   

Often times in popular culture, the cutest or strongest or most perceived powerful creature is the one that gets the recognition.  They are the ones that end up on t-shirts and billboards and stickers.  Should we save them?  ABSOLUTELY.  We should save ALL the species.   But if you had to prioritize and save only one .. shouldn't it be the one with the most wide-spread impact?

The lion may be the King of the Jungle (Bush, really, I never have understood why we say Jungle), but they wouldn't be the apex predator of their ecosystem, in fact they may not have an ecosystem at all, if it weren't for the lowly termite.   Besides being a food source for many insect-eating creatures, termites build mounds which serve as critical habitat for a vast number of other species.  Many of those species are not equipped to actually build their own dens from scratch and are dependent upon the termite mounds.  And if the critters had no dens, they'd have no babies, and they'd have no population ... which would ultimately mean no food for the lion.   

Moral of the story:   To save the lion, we must save the termite!  So we should first look not at what the lion needs to survive, but actually look at what the termite needs to thrive.  It often is not the most direct or readily apparent connection, but is one deeply rooted in science as we unravel how interconnected species are to one another.

In this series, we will select specific keynote species and dive in to the critical role they each play in their ecosystem.  

If you have any specific creatures you'd like to suggest for exploration on this subject, please comment below!

Behind the Scenes 

Hand drawn and digitally colored.  I am enjoying both processes and appreciate having a mix of screen-time and offline art time.  I plan to reuse the keystone arch on the individual species pages to follow in this series.

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