Trophic cascade
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate trophic level is a herbivore). The trophic cascade is an ecological concept which has stimulated new research in many areas of ecology. For example, it can be important for understanding the knock-on effects of removing  top predators from food webs, as humans have done in many places through hunting and fishing. A top-down cascade is a trophic cascade where the top consumer/predator controls the primary consumer population. In turn, the primary producer population thrives. The removal of the top predator can alter the food web dynamics. In this case, the primary consumers would overpopulate and exploit the primary producers. Eventually there would not be enough primary producers to sustain the consumer population. Top-down food web stability depends on competition and predation in the higher trophic levels. Invasive species can also alter this  cascade by removing or becoming a top predator. This interaction may not always be negative. Studies have shown that certain invasive species have begun to shift cascades; and as a consequence, ecosystem degradation has been repaired. For example, if the abundance of large piscivorous fish is increased in a lake, the abundance of their prey, smaller fish that eat zooplankton, should decrease. The resulting increase in zooplankton should, in turn, cause the biomass of its prey, phytoplankton, to decrease. In a bottom-up cascade, the population of primary producers will always control the increase/decrease of the energy in the  higher trophic levels. Primary producers are plants and phytoplankton that require photosynthesis. Although light is important, primary producer populations are altered by the amount of nutrients in the system. This food web relies on the availability and limitation of resources. All populations will experience growth if there is initially a large amount of nutrients. In a subsidy cascade, species populations at one trophic level can be supplemented by external food. For example, native animals can forage on resources that don't originate in their same habitat, such as native predators eating livestock. This may increase their local abundances thereby affecting  other species in the ecosystem and causing an ecological cascade. For example, Luskin et al. (2017) found that native animals living in protected primary rainforest in Malaysia found food subsidies in neighboring oil palm plantations. This subsidy allowed native animal populations to increase, which then triggered powerful secondary ‘cascading’ effects on forest tree community. Specifically, crop-raiding wild boar ("Sus scrofa") built thousands of nests from the forest understory vegetation and this caused a 62% decline in forest tree sapling density over a 24-year study period. Such cross-boundary subsidy cascades may be widespread in both terrestrial and marine  ecosystems and present significant conservation challenges. These trophic interactions shape patterns of biodiversity globally. Humans and climate change have affected these cascades drastically. One example can be seen with sea otters (Enhydra lutris) on the Pacific coast of the United States of America. Over time, human interactions caused a removal of sea otters. One of their main prey, the pacific purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) eventually began to overpopulate. The overpopulation caused increased predation of giant kelp ("Macrocystis pyrifera"). As a result, there was extreme deterioration of the kelp forests along the California coast. This is why it is important  for countries to regulate marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Predator-induced interactions could heavily influence the flux of atmospheric carbon if managed on a global scale. For example, a study was conducted to determine the cost of potential stored carbon in living kelp biomass in sea otter ("Enhydra lutris") enhanced ecosystems. The study valued the potential storage between $205 million and $408 million dollars (US) on the European Carbon Exchange (2012). Origins and theory. Aldo Leopold is generally credited with first describing the mechanism of a trophic cascade, based on his observations of overgrazing of mountain slopes by deer  after human extermination of wolves. Nelson Hairston, Frederick E. Smith and Lawrence B. Slobodkin are generally credited with introducing the concept into scientific discourse, although they did not use the term either. Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin argued that predators reduce the abundance of herbivores, allowing plants to flourish. This is often referred to as the green world hypothesis. The green world hypothesis is credited with bringing attention to the role of top-down forces (e.g. predation) and indirect effects in shaping ecological communities. The prevailing view of communities prior to Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin was trophodynamics, which attempted to explain  the structure of communities using only bottom-up forces (e.g. resource limitation). Smith may have been inspired by the experiments of a Czech ecologist, Hrbáček, whom he met on a United States State Department cultural exchange. Hrbáček had shown that fish in artificial ponds reduced the abundance of zooplankton, leading to an increase in the abundance of phytoplankton. Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin feuded that the ecological communities acted as food chains with three trophic levels. Subsequent models expanded the argument to food chains with more than or fewer than three trophic levels. Lauri Oksanen argued that the top trophic level  in a food chain increases the abundance of producers in food chains with an odd number of trophic levels (such as in Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin's three trophic level model), but decreases the abundance of the producers in food chains with an even number of trophic levels. Additionally, he argued that the number of trophic levels in a food chain increases as the productivity of the ecosystem increases. Criticisms. Although the existence of trophic cascades is not controversial, ecologists have long debated how ubiquitous they are. Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin argued that terrestrial ecosystems, as a rule, behave as  a three trophic level trophic cascade, which provoked immediate controversy. Some of the criticisms, both of Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin's model and of Oksanen's later model, were: Antagonistically, this principle is sometimes called the "trophic trickle". Classic examples. Although Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin formulated their argument in terms of terrestrial food chains, the earliest empirical demonstrations of trophic cascades came from marine and, especially, aquatic ecosystems. Some of the most famous examples are: Terrestrial trophic cascades. The fact that the earliest documented trophic cascades all occurred in lakes and streams led a scientist to speculate that fundamental differences  between aquatic and terrestrial food webs made trophic cascades primarily an aquatic phenomenon. Trophic cascades were restricted to communities with relatively low species diversity, in which a small number of species could have overwhelming influence and the food web could operate as a linear food chain. Additionally, well documented trophic cascades at that point in time all occurred in food chains with algae as the primary producer. Trophic cascades, Strong argued, may only occur in communities with fast-growing producers which lack defenses against herbivory. Subsequent research has documented trophic cascades in terrestrial ecosystems, including: Critics pointed out that published  terrestrial trophic cascades generally involved smaller subsets of the food web (often only a single plant species). This was quite different from aquatic trophic cascades, in which the biomass of producers as a whole were reduced when predators were removed. Additionally, most terrestrial trophic cascades did not demonstrate reduced plant biomass when predators were removed, but only increased plant damage from herbivores. It was unclear if such damage would actually result in reduced plant biomass or abundance. In 2002 a meta-analysis found trophic cascades to be generally "weaker" in terrestrial ecosystems, meaning that changes in predator biomass resulted in  smaller changes in plant biomass. In contrast, a study published in 2009 demonstrated that multiple species of trees with highly varying autecologies are in fact heavily impacted by the loss of an apex predator. Another study, published in 2011, demonstrated that the loss of large terrestrial predators also significantly degrades the integrity of river and stream systems, impacting their morphology, hydrology, and associated biological communities. The critics' model is challenged by studies accumulating since the reintroduction of gray wolves ("Canis lupus") to Yellowstone National Park. The gray wolf, after being extirpated in the 1920s and absent for 70 years, was  reintroduced to the park in 1995 and 1996. Since then a three-tiered trophic cascade has been reestablished involving wolves, elk ("Cervus elaphus"), and woody browse species such as aspen ("Populus tremuloides"), cottonwoods ("Populus" spp.), and willows ("Salix" spp.). Mechanisms likely include actual wolf predation of elk, which reduces their numbers, and the threat of predation, which alters elk behavior and feeding habits, resulting in these plant species being released from intensive browsing pressure. Subsequently, their survival and recruitment rates have significantly increased in some places within Yellowstone's northern range. This effect is particularly noted among the range's  riparian plant communities, with upland communities only recently beginning to show similar signs of recovery. Examples of this phenomenon include: Trophic cascades also impact the biodiversity of ecosystems, and when examined from that perspective wolves appear to be having multiple, positive cascading impacts on the biodiversity of Yellowstone National Park. These impacts include: There are a number of other examples of trophic cascades involving large terrestrial mammals, including: Marine trophic cascades. In addition to the classic examples listed above, more recent examples of trophic cascades in marine ecosystems have been identified: