 The Tamil Nadu government had asked the civic agencies to clear the invasive species in the eco sensitive areas Now my question is what is this invasive species? Why is a government asking to clear a species is invasive species and keystone species the same? Do watch this video to know more about this topic. So what are invasive species? See invasive species which is also called introduced species is any non-native species that Significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystem it colonizes Such species may arrive in new areas through natural migration But they are often introduced by the activities of other species Water hyacinth is a very good example of water invasive species and the one mentioned in the news article You know the prosopus julephlora. It is a shrub or small tree which is identified as Invasive species in India because it absorbs all the nutrients and damages the growth of other Organisms around it. Okay, and also note that it has been mentioned that this prosopus julephlora is not a very good nesting site Okay, so in simple words invasive species can be any plant or animal or pathogen or any other Organism that are not native to an ecosystem and which may cause Economic or environmental harm or adversely affect the human health Okay, and here in this image you can see how a species is determined whether it is invasive or not See monitoring the growth of the invasive species is very much important because it has significant impact on the Environment okay, and now in this discussion. Let us learn the opposite to this invasive species, which is the keystone species See a keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem Yes, I am saying this because the ecosystem would be drastically altered or cease to exist without its keystone species And this keystone species have low functional redundancy This means that if the species disappear from the ecosystem No other species would be able to fill its ecological niche and consequently the ecosystem would be forced to change radically allowing new or possible Invasive species to populate the habitat if such a thing happens then ecosystem will be affected significantly Am I right and remember any organism from plants to fungi may be a keystone species They are not always the largest or most abundant species in an ecosystem and know that a keystone species is often but not always a predator Even herbivores can be a keystone species for example in African savannas the elephants are a keystone species It controls the tree population which makes the grasses thrive and sustain grazing Okay, and then take another example for this keystone species, which is the sea otter It feeds on sea urchins. That is typically a small spiny and round organism and thus the sea otter controls the sea urchins Population now my question is what happens if sea urchins population is not controlled See it would eat up the seaweed which is a major source of food for the ecosystem Seaweed here refers to the macro algae like sea latures or green algae, etc. Okay, so without sea otter the entire marine ecosystem will be damaged Okay, and that is why we call it as keystone species Thus we can say that the keystone species or animals or plants or whatever Organism that have a huge influence on the food webs and the way these animals or Organism influence food webs varies from habitat to habitat Okay, so today we understood that invasive species and keystone species are opposite to each other Yes, invasive species are the destroyer of biodiversity Whereas the keystone species are the protector or you can say they are the maintenance hedge of the biodiversity And this is the reason why the government itself asked it to remove a species from the environment So to know more about such kind of environment topics do watch our Hindu newspaper analysis regularly