Answer:
Respiration
Explanation:
Food energy is chemical energy that animals (including humans) derive from food through the process of cellular respiration. Cellular respiration may either involve the chemical reaction of food molecules with molecular oxygen (aerobic respiration) or the process of reorganizing the food molecules without additional oxygen (anaerobic respiration).
Abiotic because biotic is living. So abiotic is the opposite.
The species was a keystone species.
Keystone species are the species that ''hold the ecosystem together''.
They have an important role in the trophic networks (food chains) and often they can even afflict changes in the abiotic part of the ecosystem (change the composition of soil, purify the water, lower the effect of the wind etc)
Therefore, when a keystone species is removed it affects greatly the whole ecosystem.