Ecology: The Science of Life and Interconnections
Delve into ecology's principles, including food webs, biodiversity, and the importance of keystone species in our ecosystems.
What has been corrected on this page?
Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.
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Qualified five ecology claims: framed the 10% trophic-transfer rule as a rule of thumb with wide real-world variation (roughly 2-20%) and food-chain length as often (not universally) around four or five links; noted that the Yellowstone wolf trophic cascade, including how much wolves changed the rivers and beaver activity, is debated among ecologists rather than settled; reframed the Tilman et al. (1994) extinction-debt estimate as large but uncertain rather than a precise 'hundreds of thousands of species'; added uncertainty to the sixth-mass-extinction '100 to 1,000 times background rate' figure (the multiple depends on how background rates are calculated); and corrected the SLOSS reserve-design claim to reflect that whether a single large reserve beats several small ones is genuinely unresolved and context-dependent.
What the page claimedThe article presented a universal 10% rule and four-or-five food-chain links, the Yellowstone wolf stream-flow cascade as confirmed, a precise Tilman extinction-debt figure, a 100-1000x extinction rate, and single-large-reserve superiority as established.
What was correctedQualified the trophic and extinction figures with their real variation and uncertainty, flagged the Yellowstone cascade as debated, and corrected the SLOSS claim to an unresolved debate.
Why: These were textbook simplifications stated as settled fact. Corrections add the appropriate uncertainty and the SLOSS debate rather than adding new sources.
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