No “Paine”, no gain

Name:

Class: Date: …… / …… / ……

In the 1960’s, Robert Paine, an ecologist at the University of Washington in the United States, conducted an
experiment to determine the effect of predators on the stability of an ecosystem. He, and other ecologists at the
time, wondered if the removal of an important “top” predator from an ecosystem would have a positive impact on
the ecosystem, and result in a greater variety of species, and a healthy and stable ecosystem; or if the absence of
the top predator would have a negative impact on the organisms, resulting in fewer species and an unbalanced and
unhealthy ecosystem.

In order to answer these questions about the impact of top predators on the health of the ecosystem, Paine
studied the species’ interactions on the rocky shoreline of Washington. For his experiment, Paine removed the top
predators from a portion of the rocky shoreline. The top predator that he removed and returned to the ocean was
a type of starfish, Pisanter ochraceus, which preys, or feeds on, other organisms, such as snails, mussels and
barnacles, that live in the ecosystem. In the area of the shoreline next to the removal site, he left the ecosystem in
its original state as a control group, with the top predator starfish still feeding on the other species.

For the next 10 years, Paine kept the experimental area of the ecosystem free of any Pisanter that migrated there.
Throughout the time of the experiment, he made observations and collected data about the numbers and type of
different species that lived in the experimental area, and compared that to his observations and data from the
control area. His results surprised and impressed not only him, but many members of the scientific community.
Indeed, his findings and conclusions about the role of the top predator in an ecosystem have formed the
foundation of ecological principles of species interaction’s.

So what is your hypothesis? Considering that a healthy ecosystem is one that has a diverse variety of species
interacting, what impact do you think removing top predator has on an ecosystem? Will removing top predators
make the ecosystem less diverse, unbalanced, and unhealthy?

In this activity you will process some of Paine’s data and present it in a graph. You will then be able to analyze the
results to determine, as Paine said, the impact that top predator removal has on the ecosystem.

Write your ideas down and share them with the class.
These are an excerpt of Paine’s results:

Year Number of species

With Pisaster Without Pisaster
1963 17.0 18.0
1964 17.5 13.0
1965 17.8 7.5
1966 18.0 2.5
1967 18.2 2.5
1968 19.0 2.5
1969 19.5 2.0
1970 19.8 2.0
1971 19.9 1.5
1972 20.0 2.0
1973 20.1 2.5
Average

Draw a graph that shows the pattern in the number of species from 1963 to 1973, both with and without Pisaster.