How does biodiversity contribute to the sustainability of an ecosystem?

Answer 1

The more diversity there is in an ecosystem, the more it is likely that several species have the same function in that ecosystem's balance.

In a ecosystem, there are several species interacting with each other.
A good example of those function could be a trophic network (fig 1) with prey, predators and primary productors where every member of that comunity has a dynamic of population with natality and mortality that has a more or less stable balance.

fig 1) a simplyfied trophic network

If for any reason, natural or anthropic, a species is to vanish from the ecosystem and if the said species was bearing a function in the ecosystem, the whole ecosystem could suffer from the disappearance. Indeed if you remove any member of the simplyfied network above, every other spicies would suffer from a lack due to a cascade reaction in the network.

In the orther hand, a richer ecosystem that would have several species bearing the same function would be more resilient to a vanishing species since no function would dissapear.

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Answer 2

Caleb Allen

Biodiversity contributes to the sustainability of an ecosystem by enhancing ecosystem stability, resilience to disturbances, and productivity. It provides a greater variety of species to perform various ecological functions, such as nutrient cycling, pollination, and pest control. Additionally, diverse ecosystems are better able to adapt to changing environmental conditions, including climate change and human disturbances. Overall, biodiversity ensures the long-term viability and functionality of ecosystems, which in turn supports human well-being and livelihoods.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.