What animal or insect going extinct would have the greatest impact on the ecosystem?
Curious on some replies here. I always hear having bees go extinct would be horrible for us. Curious if that’s the worse?
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Curious on some replies here. I always hear having bees go extinct would be horrible for us. Curious if that’s the worse?
Oceanic plankton produces like half of the world's oxygen. Trees get too much credit. I'm not sure what the exact impact of losing so much oxygen would be, but... Not good?
Plankton isn't an animal or insect though, it's algae and bacteria
My vote goes to worms. Without them huge amounts (like the vast majority) of land will become dead after a few years. Worms are very underrated
That’s an interesting take I don’t think anybody else has said worms yet
You and I thrive in oxygen, because we evolved in its presence, but oxygen is a really potent corrosive chemical that destroys a lot of life. When blue-green algae first showed up and started dumping oxygen everywhere, it in turn was a cataclysmic event for life on Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Oxidation\_Event
Probably be pretty bad for us, but I suppose if you're an obligate anaerobic organism, you'd be having the best situation since a couple of billion years ago.