Eli5: What are keystone species and why are they important??
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Keystone species have a lot of effects on their ecosystem. They might be an important prey species without which some predators wouldn’t be able to eat (and thus the food chain would collapse), they might change the landscape dramatically and create habitats for other species (like beavers do with their dams), or they might be the important predator species keeping a prey species from overgrazing and ravaging the landscape. Either way, if you remove that species, the local wildlife suffer dramatically from its loss.
Some species can disappear and make only minimal changes. If every predator in an area eats a variety of prey, and one species of mouse vanishes, the hawks and snakes just shrug and move on. But if beavers all die/leave and then your rivers never get dammed and the local wetlands drain out…you’re screwed.
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