8.6 Biodiversity

Describe the relationship between ecosystem diversity and its resilience to changes in the environment.

• Natural and artificial ecosystems with fewer component parts, and with little diversity among the parts, are often less resilient to changes in the environment.
• Keystone species, producers, and essential abiotic and biotic factors contribute to maintaining the diversity of an ecosystem.

Explain how the addition or removal of any component of an ecosystem will affect its overall short-term and longterm structure.

• The effects of keystone species on the ecosystem are disproportionate relative to their abundance in the ecosystem. When they are removed from the ecosystem, it often collapses.