Question

The picture shown is a food chain found in the Grand Basin desert in Nevada. Suppose a company that makes snakeskin wallets sets up shop in the area and gets all of the Mojave rattlesnakes. What would you least expect to happen next?

Answer 1

The incident that you would least expect to happen next is Desert sage bush populations grow uncontrollably.

Explanation:

The picture depicts a food chain in the Grand Basin Desert in Nevada. All the  animals in the food chain are either prey or predators or both. If A company that makes snakeskin wallets set up a shop in the area, the population of Mojave rattlesnakes will see a decline.

The rattlesnakes preys upon kangaroo rat and jack rabbit indicating that as the rattle snake population declines, the population of kangaroo rat and jack rabbit will increase. Kangaroo rat feeds on desert sage bush.So when their numbers increases, the desert sage bush population will decrease.

Desert sage bush population growing uncontrollably is the least expected possibility.

Answer 2

Kangaroo rat population will show an increase  and Cougars will eat more jack rabbits than usual will be least expected.

Explanation:

The food chain of the Grand Basin in Nevada shows that kangaroo rat is the only eaten by Mojave rattlesnake.

The overtaking of all the Mojave rattlesnake would cause the survival of kangaroo rat because no other predator has its prey on kangaroo rat.

The no eating will lead an increase number of kangaroo rats as long as they live naturally on the trophic level.

It is deduced that kangaroo rat is not transferring any energy to the other trophic level neither the biomass.

Cougars will eat more jack rabbits than usual because they have been preying on Mojave rattle snake and jack rabbit, the disappearance of Mojave rattle snake will cause them rely on cougars which will lead to compete for the food among the species.