News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ocean's Oxygen Starts Running Low (2016). Parent comment

Re:Ocean's Oxygen Starts Running Low (2016) by CapitalistCartr on Sunday January 07, 2018 @08:24PM (#16093976)
I'm not "just repeating the claim". If you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you only need sunlight and water. If half the animals die off, you're fine. The higher up you are, the more species below on which you are dependent. You're only dependent on what's below, not what's above. With us at the top, a 50% die-off would be catastrophic.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ocean's Oxygen Starts Running Low (2016) by mehrdadn on Sunday January 07, 2018 @08:35PM (#16094015)
In that case I believe you're saying something else, not answering the question I had asked. The sentence I replied to was this:

> as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly

Again, I repeat my question: if we were lower in the food web, wouldn't we still depend on branches of the food web lower than you? That seems to be true regardless of where you are on the food web. In fact, wouldn't we be more susceptible to harm if we had fewer possible sources of food? One would expect that the fewer alternatives we have, the worse off we would be, right?

[ Parent | on HN ]