Mystery #4Tier 3nature in balance

With no one in charge, how does the wild keep itself roughly in balance?

There is no king of the forest handing out orders, no ranger counting the deer, no rule book pinned to a tree. And yet, most of the time, the wild does not spin out of control. The numbers of each creature wobble up and down, yet somehow most of them are still there year after year. With nobody in charge, how does the wild keep itself in balance?

A Canada lynx sitting in deep snow, tufted ears up, one of the hunters whose numbers rise and fall with the hares it eats — Photo: Michael Zahra · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Your guess

What do you think keeps the numbers from running wild, with no one in charge?

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