Apex predator

An apex predator, also known as an alpha predator or apical predator, is a predator residing at the top of a food chain upon which no other creatures prey. Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that apex-predator species occupy the highest trophic level or levels and play a crucial role in maintaining the health of their ecosystems. One study of marine food webs defined apex predators as greater than trophic level four. The apex predator concept is commonly applied in wildlife management, conservation and ecotourism.

Food chains are often far shorter on land, with their apices usually limited to the third trophic level – for example, giant constrictor snakes, crocodilians, hyenas, wolves or big cats preying mostly upon large herbivores. Apex predators do not need to be hypercarnivores.

Apex predators affect prey species' population dynamics. Where two competing species are in an ecologically unstable relationship, apex predators tend to create stability if they prey upon both. Inter-predator relationships are also affected by apex status. Non-native fish, for example, have been known to devastate formerly dominant predators. One lake manipulation study found that when the non-native smallmouth bass was removed, lake trout, the suppressed native apex predator, diversified its prey selection and increased its trophic level.

Effects on wider ecosystem characteristics such as plant ecology have been debated, but there is evidence of a significant impact by apex predators. When introduced to subarctic islands, for example, Arctic foxes' predation of seabirds has been shown to turn grassland into tundra. Such wide-ranging effects on lower levels of an ecosystem are termed trophic cascades. The removal of top-level predators, often – and, especially, recently – through human agency, can radically cause or disrupt trophic cascades.

...
Wikipedia