An example of violating the laws of nature ......

ecological balance

Ecological balance is a state in which the structure and function of the ecosystem are relatively stable in a certain period of time. The input and output of matter and energy are almost equal, and it can be restored to the original stable state through self-regulation (or artificial control) under external interference. When the external disturbance exceeds the self-control ability of the ecosystem and cannot be restored to its original state, it is called ecological imbalance or destruction of ecological balance. Ecological balance is dynamic. Maintaining ecological balance is not only to maintain its original stable state. Ecosystem can establish a new balance under the beneficial influence of human beings, and realize more reasonable structure, more efficient function and better ecological benefits. The above definition shows that:

(1) The natural ecosystem experienced a long-term succession from simple to complex, and finally formed a relatively stable state. So far, its species have remained relatively stable in terms of species and quantity; The input and output of energy are almost equal, that is, the energy flow and material circulation in the system can keep balance for a long time. At this time, the creatures in the system will fill all the effective space, and the environmental resources can be used most reasonably and effectively. For example, the tropical rain forest is a community that has developed to a mature stage. Its vertical stratification is obvious, its structure is complex, and there are many species per unit area, each occupying favorable environmental conditions, living in harmony with each other and having high productivity;

(2) The ecosystem has certain internal adjustment ability (see "Automatic Adjustment of Ecosystem");

(3) Ecological balance is dynamic. In the process of biological evolution and community succession, it includes the process of constantly breaking the old balance and establishing a new balance. Human beings should be inspired by nature, instead of looking at the ecological balance negatively, and exert their subjective initiative to maintain the ecological balance suitable for human needs (such as establishing nature reserves), or break the old balance that does not meet their own requirements and establish a new balance (such as transforming the desert into an oasis), so as to make the structure of the ecosystem more reasonable, the function more perfect and the benefit higher.

Ecological balance refers to the stability of two aspects in the ecosystem: on the one hand, the composition and quantitative proportion of biological species (that is, organisms, plants and microorganisms) are relatively stable; On the other hand, abiotic environment (including air, sunlight, water, soil, etc. ) remain relatively stable. Ecological balance is a dynamic balance. For example, individuals are constantly changing, but overall, the system remains stable and the number of organisms has not changed dramatically.

Once the ecosystem loses its balance, it will have very serious chain consequences. For example, in 1950s, China launched a campaign to eliminate the "four pests" of sparrows. However, within a few years after a large number of sparrows were killed, serious insect pests occurred, which caused great losses to agricultural production.

Later, scientists found that sparrows are good at eating pests. When sparrows are eliminated, pests will multiply in large numbers without natural enemies, leading to a series of painful consequences such as pest infestation and crop failure. The balance of ecosystem is often a dynamic balance that nature took a long time to establish. Once destroyed, some balances cannot be rebuilt, and the consequences may be irreparable by human efforts. Therefore, human beings should respect the ecological balance and help maintain it, and never destroy it easily.

Other definitions: refers to the dynamic equilibrium relationship established by the interaction between organisms, environment and organisms in the natural ecosystem.

Also known as "natural balance". In nature, forests, grasslands and lakes are all composed of biological components such as animals, plants and microorganisms and abiotic components such as light, water, soil, air and temperature. Each component does not exist in isolation, but is a unified synthesis that is interrelated and restricted. They reach a relatively stable equilibrium state through interaction, which is called ecological balance. In fact, it is to maintain the stability between production, consumption and decomposition in the ecosystem. If one of the components changes too drastically, a series of chain reactions may occur, destroying the ecological balance. If a chemical substance or a chemical element exceeds the normal content too much in the natural state, it will also affect the ecological balance. Ecological balance is the basic condition for the normal growth and reproduction of living things, and it is also the basic condition for human survival.

Ecological balance refers to the stability of two aspects in the ecosystem: on the one hand, the composition and quantitative proportion of biological species (that is, organisms, plants and microorganisms) are relatively stable; On the other hand, abiotic environment (including air, sunlight, water, soil, etc. ) remain relatively stable. Ecological balance is a dynamic balance. For example, individuals are constantly changing, but overall, the system remains stable and the number of organisms has not changed dramatically.

Stories about deer and wolves

1859, an Englishman released 13 rabbits in Australia for hunting. So far, 600 million offspring have been produced. These rabbits often eat tens of thousands of square kilometers of plants, leading to starvation and even extinction of other kinds of wild animals.

Pueraria lobata is a common courtyard greening plant in China. It runs like a wild horse in the United States and quickly occupies more than 7 million square kilometers of land in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, leaving many plants with nowhere to live.

Excessive killing of natural enemies of pests causes forest diseases and insect pests; India has killed a large number of otters, which has increased the number of sick fish and reduced fish production.

When the British first entered Australia, they brought mice to Australia by boat, so they introduced cats to catch mice. Cats do kill mice, but because Australia lacks large carnivores and imported cats have no natural enemies, they breed in large numbers and have to be hunted artificially.

Chinese mainland killed a large number of sparrows in 1950s, which caused serious pests in some areas. The reason is that sparrows, the natural enemies of pests, have been killed, and pests have lost their natural inhibitors.

Cactus originated in South America and was first introduced to Australia as an ornamental plant. Unexpectedly, these plants spread rapidly, occupying 25 million hectares of pastures and fields in Australia. People roll them with knives, hoes and trolleys, all to no avail.

There is an island in England. There are many voles on the island. In order to drive away the voles, people put a batch of snakes on the island. In just two years, all the voles on the island were eaten up by snakes. At this time, there were more and more snakes on the island, and they began to threaten people's lives. ...

Water hyacinth originated in South America and was introduced to Chinese mainland as feed for livestock and poultry in the1930s. It was once planted as an ornamental plant and a water purification plant. Because of its rapid asexual reproduction, it has been widely distributed in North China, East China, Central China, South China and other 17 provinces and cities, especially Kunming, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, southern Henan and other places.

Anyone who has been to Kunming has seen the power of water hyacinth. Water hyacinths all grow on the water surface of Dianchi Lake 1 1,000 hectares, and the coverage rate is close to 1 1,000%. Due to water pollution and the crazy growth of water hyacinth, many aquatic organisms in Dianchi Lake are on the verge of extinction. According to records, before 1960s, there were 6 species of aquatic plants/kloc-0 and 68 species of aquatic animals in Dianchi Lake, but in 1980s, most of the aquatic plants were extinct, leaving only 30 species of aquatic animals.

People are afraid of mice, mice eat cats and mice eat chickens-the story of ecological balance

Xishan Island, the largest island in Taihu Lake, and Dasha Island, a small island in Taihu Lake, are friends islands. My friend sent a speedboat to pick us up, and the speedboat arrived at Dasha Island in less than 20 minutes.

Dasha Island covers an area of less than 1 km2. It used to be a bare island in Taihu Lake, covered with thatch and surrounded by reeds. I went to the island for soil investigation more than 20 years ago, and the memory I left was that there were many mice on the island. So, as soon as I got to the island, I asked them, how did you beat the mice? Then, they told all the stories of famine on the island, mostly related to rats. In fact, it is the ecological balance on the island.

When they first went to the island, there were many mice on the island. And because no one lives on the island and the mouse has never seen anyone, the mouse is not afraid of people. How do you think people will feel when the mice on the island are in charge and people meet mice who are not afraid of people everywhere? People are afraid of mice!

They caught the kitten and went to the island to raise it. A few days later, the kitten disappeared. After finding the body of the cat, it is analyzed that the kitten may have been killed by a mouse. Later, some big cats were caught on the island. After half a year's cat-and-mouse war, the number of mice decreased significantly. Two years later, cats have multiplied to dozens, and there are few mice.

At the beginning, there were more than 500 chickens on the island, and only 300 were killed by rats. Three years later, I found that cats were eating chickens every day. Moreover, cats often chase chickens, and many chickens are scared to death. They found that the cat began to eat chicken. After seeing the eagle eating chicken, the cat found that the eagle was eating leftover chicken. The cat tasted it and began to eat chicken. But the biggest reason is that there are more cats and fewer mice, and the food chain of cats has changed.

When the cat began to eat chicken, it began to treat the cat. But cats are heroes and don't want to drive them away, so protecting chickens is a measure. They thought of keeping a dog, using dogs to look after chickens and not letting cats eat them. Dogs did their duty to control chickens and starve cats. After half a year, many cats died of illness. Cats are rare now.

Now there are three dogs on the island, and they are found chasing chickens.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that there are four or five eagles. Chickens are found to be eaten every month, and they are scared to death.

I really don't know what will happen in the future. Ha ha!

The story of dung beetles.

Dung beetles, commonly known as dung beetles, feed on livestock manure. In people's minds, this is a tasteless and useless insect. But in 1982, they crossed the ocean from China to Australia, settled there and played a role in animal husbandry. Why did Australia introduce dung beetles from China, regardless of Qian Shan's vast waters? It turns out that Australia, a country with a very developed animal husbandry, has raised tens of millions of cows. These cows excrete hundreds of millions of tons of feces every day, covering millions of acres of grassland, and cow dung also breeds maggots, which is very unsanitary. This is a very annoying question. They imported these dung beetles from our country and ate cow dung there. So there are no dung beetles in Australia? Yes, but the indigenous dung beetles there don't eat cow dung, but only kangaroo dung. Australia has now introduced dung beetles from China, breaking the original ecological balance and establishing a new one.

From this example, we can know that the so-called ecological balance refers to the interaction of various opposing factors in the development of animal and plant communities and ecosystems, reaching a relatively stable stage, that is, a relatively balanced stage. In nature, it is very important to maintain this relative balance. For example, in a cotton producing area, under natural conditions, due to the control of natural enemies such as ladybugs, lacewings and aphid parasitic bees, the cotton aphid population can be maintained at a low level. However, if pesticides are used for a long time to kill a large number of natural enemies, cotton aphids will also develop drug resistance, destroy the natural ecological balance between cotton aphids and natural enemies, lead to the occurrence of cotton aphids, and thus affect cotton yield. But this does not mean that all kinds of balances existing in nature are reasonable and inviolable. In some cases, for our own needs, human beings can take the initiative to break the old ecological balance and establish a new ecological balance that meets human needs without violating the laws of nature. The southbound dung beetles mentioned above is an example. However, in many parts of our country, the unreasonable utilization of natural resources has destroyed the ecological balance for a long time, which is particularly worthy of our attention. For example, the area of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau of Gansu Province102,000 square kilometers, accounting for 24% of the area of soil erosion in the Northwest Plateau. The annual sediment transport is more than 500 million tons, which means that a layer of fertile soil with a thickness of five to six millimeters is lost in vain every year. At present, only the Yangtze River and the Yellow River in China take away 2.6 billion tons of sediment every year, which is equivalent to losing 6 million mu of fertile land. Therefore, some scientists say that it is not sediment, but the blood of the Chinese nation. This lesson is profound.

Snakes and crops

A few decades ago, a tsunami occurred along the coast of Guangdong Province, which was caused by a typhoon. Many fields and villages were submerged by the sea. After the flood, there was no good harvest of crops there, which was the case for several years in a row. Even if the weather is favorable, it has not improved. Later, the old farmer came up with an idea. They bought a batch of snakes from other places and put them in the field. Strange to say, the crops had a bumper harvest that year. People don't understand what this is. The old farmer revealed the secret. It turned out that the flood drowned all the snakes hidden in the cave, but the vole swam to the tree and the hillside and saved his life. Later, when the flood receded, the voles returned to the fields to spoil the crops. There are no snakes to catch them. They breed so fast that the crops are ruined by voles. Now there are snakes in the field, a large number of voles are eaten by snakes, and crops have a good harvest.

Biologist Darwin told the story of cats and alfalfa. He said that in many parts of Britain, you only need to look at how many cats are fed in the village to know how alfalfa grows there. Alfalfa spreads pollen through native bees. There are too many voles in the field, and the activities of soil bees are affected. There are many cats in the village, so voles can't be so presumptuous. Therefore, the number of cats is closely related to the alfalfa harvest.

When it rains, the ground is wet; As soon as the sun comes out, things dry easily; Fire will burn things, and water can put out the fire. These are obvious, and everyone knows them. But things in the world are not only so simple, but also complicated, so it is impossible to see them clearly at once. If a person does not pay attention to hygiene and spits on the road, many people may get sick and even get tuberculosis. When the tuberculosis patient was lying in bed moaning, how could he think that the man who spit on the road made him sick? The relationship between things is very complicated, and we must take pains to study them and master their laws. Only in this way can we do things more in line with our own wishes.

Saving butterflies in Australia

There is a butterfly sculpture monument and a butterfly memorial in Queensland, Australia. This is because the locals regard a kind of night butterfly as "the savior of Australia" and made it specially for it.

1860, Queensland, Australia introduced two kinds of cactus from the United States and Mexico, and people wanted to use it as a hedge fence around the pasture. Unexpectedly, once the cactus with strong vitality meets the extremely suitable temperature and fertile soil in Australia, it will multiply and spread at an alarming rate, and several cacti will soon become a large "thorny jungle". In just 20 years, more than 30 million hectares of land have been occupied by these spiny plants, and their territory has expanded at an alarming rate of 500,000 hectares per year, and large areas of fertile soil have become useless wilderness for animal husbandry and agriculture.

The local government set up a special committee and launched a large-scale struggle against cactus. People cut, burn and uproot with knives, but all have little effect. The old ones have not been eliminated, and the new ones have grown again. After exhausting all kinds of methods, people in trouble turned their attention to insects that only eat cactus. An entomologist discovered that there is a butterfly in Argentina that moves at night. Its wings are about 4 cm long and grayish brown. It only eats cactus and has a big appetite. So he brought thousands of such night butterfly eggs back to Australia to breed and raise them. Sure enough, the night butterfly has become an effective cactus nemesis. Everywhere, cacti will be swallowed and destroyed. To1935,300 million hectares of land has become fertile farmland and pasture.

For example, although cacti can still be found in Australia today, night butterflies will never give them a chance to multiply. Although this kind of night butterfly is ugly and far less gorgeous and charming than other butterflies, people have reverence and gratitude for it. As we all know, it was these humble night butterflies that saved the Australian mainland from the devastating disaster of cactus in the early 20th century. Organisms are interrelated and restricted by biological chain, and together with abiotic environment form ecological environment. Lao Tzu said that all things coexist, and each species has its own natural enemies. Under natural conditions, they prey on each other and form a food chain to keep a certain number of each species. This is called ecological balance. If a species is destroyed by human beings, its number will be reduced or extinct, and the ecology will be unbalanced.

For example, snakes eat voles, voles destroy crops, and humans prey on snakes in large quantities, and voles will be flooded.

Orioles eat pine caterpillars and destroy pine forests. If orioles decrease, pine forests will be destroyed by pine caterpillars.

Eagles prey on rabbits, and rabbits eat territory. Without eagles, the grassland will be destroyed.

So this is an important reason to protect biodiversity.

Biosphere and food chain

Biosphere is a huge and extremely complex ecosystem. It consists of countless ecosystems of different sizes. These ecosystems can be basically divided into three categories: terrestrial ecosystems, freshwater ecosystems and marine ecosystems.

Terrestrial ecosystem refers to the ecological environment that constitutes terrestrial vivid plants, such as the subtropical jungle in Xishuangbanna, China, Asian elephants, South China tigers and clouded leopards in the jungle, together with various birds and other small animals, forming a complete ecosystem. For example, in many grasslands in northern China, there are not only scenes of wind and grass and flocks of cattle and sheep everywhere, but also a paradise for all kinds of wild animals and birds. The snowy plateau and Gobi desert look desolate, but they not only have life, but also have their own ecosystems because of interdependence and environmental impact.

Freshwater ecosystem usually refers to the interdependence between freshwater organisms in rivers, lakes and swamps and the natural environment generated by them. In this ecosystem, the main body is fresh water, and all other aquatic animals and plants are objects. As long as it doesn't destroy the fresh water environment of the subject, the object generally won't have much problem. Then, this ecosystem can basically maintain balance.

Marine ecosystem, as its name implies, refers to the natural environment formed by various animal and plant groups under the main conditions of the ocean. The sea is rough and unruly, but the underwater world photographed by underwater cameras is so quiet, peaceful, warm and wonderful!

The various ecosystems that make up the biosphere have their own characteristics in structure and function and play a special role. * * * Maintain the normal function of the biosphere, which is what we usually call ecological balance.

Food chain refers to the food network relationship formed by mutual restriction and interdependence among organisms. For example, carnivores in grassland ecology-herbivores and insects-birds, restrict each other and thrive. The relationship between them is unity of opposites and natural harmony. On the African savannah, carnivores such as lions, cheetahs and hunting dogs specialize in herbivores, and their killing of wildebeests and even zebras is very brutal. However, this cruel killing is not only necessary for the survival and reproduction of carnivores, but also an essential factor for maintaining the lush grassland plants and ecological balance. Without the control of carnivores on herbivores, herbivores will develop rapidly. When the number of herbivores reaches a certain level, the grassland will be overwhelmed and degraded, and the herbivores will lose the conditions for survival and development. Killing herbivores by carnivores can not only control the number of herbivores, but also improve the quality of herbivores in a sense. After a long-term field investigation, biologists have proved that carnivores often choose sickly herbivores in the hunting process, which is undoubtedly conducive to the survival of the fittest. From this point of view, the brutal killing of herbivores by carnivores is natural and reasonable.

Carnivores feed on herbivores, which protect the grassland while controlling the number of herbivores. All kinds of birds prey on insects, just like carnivores, and also play a role in protecting grasslands. The excrement of birds and animals has become a good fertilizer to promote the growth of various plants. This food chain with plants as the main body and herbivores, carnivores and insects-birds as the objects plays an important role in maintaining the ecological balance of grassland. Hulunbeier grassland is one of the largest grasslands in northern China, and the largest animal husbandry base in China, with abundant pasture and flocks of cattle and sheep. However, in history, because of the wild wolves here, it poses a serious threat to the development of animal husbandry. In order to protect human and animal safety, local herders once organized large-scale wild wolf hunting activities, and the number of wild wolves decreased sharply. The remaining wolves no longer dared to take the grassland as their home and feed on cattle and sheep, and all moved to the deep mountains and forests. The wolves disappeared and animal husbandry developed unprecedentedly. At the same time, the number of cattle and sheep has been increasing, and rabbits have also developed at an alarming rate. Rabbits and cattle and sheep compete for pasture, and the grassland is unbearable, which leads to the rapid degradation of grassland and the danger of desertification.

Facts make people realize that once there is a problem in any link of the food chain, disaster will soon come. Wolves will poach cattle and sheep when they are hungry, but under normal circumstances wolves feed on rabbits. From this point of view, it is wild wolves that control the reproduction and development of rabbits, avoid the phenomenon that rabbits compete with cattle and sheep for food, and ensure the normal ecological environment of grassland. After the herdsmen realized this natural law, they were much more tolerant of wild wolves. They never talked about the color change of wolves again, and they beat them whenever they saw it.

Man is not only a part of the biosphere, but also plays a leading role in various ecosystems of the biosphere. People can protect various ecosystems and promote ecological balance through their own efforts; People can also plunder resources and destroy the ecological balance for their own vital interests. We must be soberly aware that human beings cannot exist supernatural, and protecting ecological balance is also protecting human beings themselves. Once the ecological balance is destroyed, the whole biosphere is threatened, and human beings themselves are doomed.

There are fewer flies, fewer spiders, and then some birds that eat spiders, and then animals that eat birds die! ~