1.   Mercury poisoning will upset the whole ecosystem.

2.   At stake is not just sagebrush, and a landscape that might already seem bleak and forbidding, but a whole ecosystem that is changing rapidly as cheatgrass spreads.

3.   But slicing the desert into pieces may hurt species that need the whole ecosystem to survive.

4.   By taking excess water, and raising soil salinity, tamarisk eventually makes the living conditions untenable for native plants and can infest whole ecosystems.

5.   The whole ecosystem depends on Mac sales, which have declined.

6.   The whole ecosystem around the peninsula is changing, and eventually this will have a significant effect on the wildlife.

7.   The whole ecosystem there is based on microscopic free-floating organisms called phytoplankton, which are eaten by tiny shrimplike crustaceans called krill.

8.   The area usually teems with life and the whole ecosystem depends on the phytoplankton which needs open water to reproduce.