Question

Explain how predation is beneficial in the long run ?

Answer 1

Here is your answer:-)
predators are must be needed for a healthy ecosystem. Predation has a powerful selective effect on prey, and the prey develop antipredator adaptions such as warning colouration, alarm calls and other signals, camouflage, mimicry of well-defended species, and defensive spines and chemicals. Sometimes predator and prey find themselves in an evolutionary arms race, a cycle of adaptations and counter-adaptations. Predation has been a major driver of evolution since at least the Cambrian period.

Answer 2

Question:

Explain how predation is beneficial in the long run?

Answer:

In predation only one species (predator) is benefited and the interaction is deterimental to the other species

(prey). Predation play very important roles and hence it is beneficial in the long run.

Followings are the some  important roles of predators:

(i) Predation is a natural way of transferring energy fixed by plants to higher trophic levels.

(ii) Predators keep prey population under control. It is called biological control, for example, the invasive exotic  prickly pear cactus in Australia was brought under control by introduction of a cactus-feeding predator  (a moth) from its natural habitat.

Biological pest control methods used in agriculture are based on the ability of predator to regulate prey population.

(iii) Predators help in maintaining species diversity in a community by reducing the intensity of competition  among competing prey species. For example, in the rocky intertidal communities of the American pacific  coast the starfish (Pisaster) were removed, experimentally, from an enclosed intertidal area, more than  ten species of invertebrates became extinct within a year, because of interspecific competition.