Eco-systems
This term, created in 1930 by Roy Clapham, was first coined in an effort to try to categorize an environment where many living species worked together intricately to sustain life in the area. The term was later refined to include all the non-living aspects of an environment that contribute to the unique way of life in a certain eco-system.
Within an eco-system predators and prey balance to find a natural equilibrium, influenced by the abundance of plant life (which provides food for herbivores) among many other factors. When a foreign element is introduced into an isolated ecosystem (such as rats and pigs to Hawaii) the local ecology can be utterly devastated, as it has no defenses to this new invasion.
