How Does Biodiversity Affect the Stability of An Ecosystem?
- Providing Services to The Ecosystem:. Biodiversity maintains stability by protecting the water resources: The quality of...
- By Providing Biological Resources:. We get food resources due to biodiversity. It also protects the food chain in an...
- Interdependence Of Species in An Ecosystem:. Species in any ecosystem...
What causes biodiversity increase or decrease?
Eight major causes of biodiversity are as follows: 1. Habitat Loss and Fragmentation 2. Over-exploitation for Commercialization 3. Invasive Species 4. Pollution 5. Global Climate Change 6. Population Growth and Over-consumption 7. Illegal Wildlife Trade 8. Species extinction.
What are the causes and consequences of loss of biodiversity?
What are the causes and consequences of loss of biodiversity? The main cause of the loss of biodiversity can be attributed to the influence of human beings on the world’s ecosystem, In fact human beings have deeply altered the environment, and have modified the territory, exploiting the species directly, for example by fishing and hunting, changing the biogeochemical cycles and …
What factors determine the stability of an ecosystem?
The organisms are affected by abiotic factors as well as the other organisms in the ecosystem. Factors such as climate, air, soil, and water affect the stability of an ecosystem and are therefore important to study in addition to organisms.
What contributes to the stability of an ecosystem?
Viewpoint: Yes, greater species diversity does lead to greater stability in ecosystems.
- Question of Definition. One problem in the debate over the relationship between species diversity (often called biodiversity) and stability is a question of definition.
- The Benefits of Species Richness. ...
- Experimental Evidence. ...
What Is Ecosystem Stability?
Ecosystem stability is the ability of any kind of ecosystem to bounce back from damages or changes in its environment. The more stable an ecosystem is the faster it heals and bounces back. We measure the stability of an ecosystem by not just the rate of recovery but also by how much it can resist any harmful change.
What is Biodiversity?
From small insects to big elephants and from moss to tall pine trees, there is immense diversity on this planet. This diversity or variety amongst the biological resources of this planet is what we call ‘biodiversity’.
What are the components of ecological stability?
Ecological stability consists of numerous components, including temporal variability, resistance to environmental change and rate of recovery from disturbance 1, 2, 16. Effects of species losses and gains on these components are of considerable interest, not least because of the potential effects on ecosystem functioning and therefore on ...
How does negative covariation affect ecosystem stability?
Negative covariation also raises the potential for non-monotonic effects of diversity on overall ecosystem stability. Ecosystem multifunctionality is the simultaneous consideration of several ecosystem functions. Similarly, overall ecosystem stability considers multiple stability components simultaneously 16 (see Extended Data Fig. 4 for clarification of terms and concepts). We first calculated overall ecosystem stability as the sum of the standardized individual components of ecosystem stability 25. For the results of our experiment, in which one stability component increases linearly with diversity and another decreases linearly (Fig. 1a ), overall ecosystem stability is invariant with species richness, because the two standardized components perfectly balance each other.
What is the importance of covariation in ecosystems?
The nature of this covariation is of paramount importance, as it defines whether diversity has consistent effects on multiple stability components, or whether some stability components increase with diversity while others decrease. However, the nature, prevalence and implications of negative covariation between stability components along diversity gradients are almost completely overlooked, including the ensuing possibility for non-monotonic effects of diversity on overall ecosystem stability.
How many correlations are there between stability components?
A general mechanistic understanding of why different studies find different correlations would be a major step forward. Of the 30 pairs of stability components, only 7 were accompanied by quantitative analyses of mechanism for both diversity–stability relationships (Extended Data Table 4 ). Response diversity was implicated in five of these seven studies. Indeed, response diversity has been identified as an important driver of the resilience of ecological systems 23, 24, and correlation among effect (that is, high biomass production) and response (for example, response to an environmental driver) traits—at least in the absence of strong interspecific interactions—might predict covariance among stability components 23. None of the studies involved manipulation of mechanism.
Where is the Department of Aquatic Ecology located?
Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
Where is the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies located?
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Does species richness affect temporal stability?
Therefore, temporal stability and resist ance were negatively correlated across the species richness gradient (Fig. 1d, reduced major axis regression analysis with a slope of −0.009 and a 95% confidence interval of −0.0178 to −0.0051). Niche complementarity, statistical averaging, low overall response diversity and possibly lower response diversity in more diverse communities were probably causes of the opposite effects of richness on temporal stability (Extended Data Fig. 3 ). The two stability components were, however, positively correlated within any single level of species richness (Fig. 1d and Extended Data Table 2 ). That is, composition variation without changes in species richness resulted in positively covarying temporal stability and resistance.
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Abstract
Interactions between biodiversity loss and climate change present significant challenges for research, policy and management of ecosystems.
1 INTRODUCTION
Assessing the consequences of human-induced changes to the environment is a key challenge for research, policy and management (Barnard & Thuiller, 2008 ).
2 LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE: DOES BIODIVERSITY PROMOTE STABILITY UNDER CLIMATE EXTREMES?
Ecosystem stability is typically considered in terms of resistance (“ the instantaneous impact of exogenous disturbance on system state ”) and/or recovery (“ the endogenous processes that pull the disturbed system back towards an equilibrium ”) (Hodgson, McDonald, & Hosken, 2015 ). In the most comprehensive study to date, Isbell et al.
3 CAUSES FOR VARIATION IN BIODIVERSITY–STABILITY RELATIONSHIPS UNDER CLIMATE EXTREMES
Inconsistent biodiversity effects on stability in the face of climate extremes (Table S1) may in part reflect differences between extremes (types or properties) which generate different impacts for a given probability of occurrence (return time).
4 EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO IMPROVE DIVERSITY–STABILITY UNDERSTANDING
Throughout this review, we have discussed how biotic (community assembly, biodiversity effects on community traits prior to the event) and abiotic factors (the nature and return time of climate events, underlying resource availability) can modulate possible stabilising effects of biodiversity under climate extremes.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Our review indicates that more diverse ecosystems do not systematically buffer the impacts of climate extremes on ecosystem functioning better than less diverse ecosystems. We highlight several factors that can modulate or confound diversity–stability relationships under extreme events, and may explain mixed results across studies to date.
