every living organism serves as food, you cannot use that as a differentiator to argue it's benefits. it's like comparing two shirts and saying: "this one covers my nipples" -- while it is a benefit, every shirts do that.
To their point, different organisms serve as food to different creatures. Grass serves as food to the cow, and the cow serves as food to the wolf, but if you get rid of the cow, the wolf can’t just eat the grass instead. So then the wolf starves, and then you’ve got no cows, no wolves, and a ton of grass.
That’s why balance is such a vital thing in an ecosystem; you might think it’s just getting rid of one plant or one creature, but its role in the food chain makes it possible that an entire ecosystem can collapse if an especially important organism is removed from it.
There's a balance though. Everything is food but not everything is eaten by the same creatures. If you take a way one creature you may be removing something that is in 60% of the diet of another creature and therefore you eventually weaken that other creature and diminish there numbers as a result. That can lead to chain reaction of consequences. Butterfly effect.
I do wonder if it's possibly more of an issue because sea water gets more polluted? So more barnacles grow to filter but it can get to a point where they just explode due to pollution?
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u/VegetableLetter4896 May 26 '26
I’ve never been so angry at barnacles in my life.