What will happen to a forest ecosystem if the monkey disappears?
It’s easier to answer your question if I just pick one species to focus on, like black-handed spider monkeys. These monkeys specialize in eating the fruits of many big forest trees, and because they swallow fruits without chewing, the seeds are eventually passed out in free packets of fertilizer, usually far from the parent tree. It’s the perfect seed dispersal strategy, so you can see how this might be impacted if the spider monkeys disappeared. Why would they disappear? Spider monkeys are vulnerable because of habitat destruction and hunting. They are particularly sensitive to changes in the environment, and so are indicator species for the health of the ecosystem.
