The Canada lynx is a rare wildcat in Minnesota. The lynx has large "snowshoe' like feet that enables it to walk on top of deep, soft, snows. Snowshoe hares are also common in the area. According to the graph of the interactions between the lynx and the hare, what
best describes their ecological relationship?

A)
Mutualism

B)
Predator/prey

C)Parasite/Host

D)
Interspecific competition

B)  Predator/prey

Explanation:

The lynx is the predator that hunts and eats the snowshoe hare, which is the prey.

The graph shows that when the hare population is large, so is the predator population because they rely on the hares as a source of food. However, the more predators there are, the less prey there will be. This causes the prey population to decrease. In turn, this decrease causes the predator population to decrease as well. If there's less food, then some of the lynx population will starve to death.

At some point, the hare population will rebound and go back up due to less predators eating them. They have a better chance to survive. As the hare population goes up, so does the lynx population. They're both strongly linked together, and we have this cyclic pattern the graph indicates. You could say this is "the cycle of life" or "cycle of nature" so to speak.

This is a very simplistic viewpoint because it does not account for other factors such as other predators and other prey, and it also doesn't take account of things like habitat loss for instance. Despite that, such predator-prey models are still useful to understand the connection between the two species.

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