Question

How does biodiversity contribute to the sustainability of a habitat

Answer 1

Biodiversity enhances ecosystem sustainability by increasing productivity and resilience, providing essential ecosystem services, and through the restoration and protection of keystone species, as demonstrated by the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone.

Step-by-step explanation:

How Biodiversity Contributes to Habitat Sustainability

Biodiversity plays a crucial role in ecosystem sustainability by enhancing productivity and stability, providing ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, pest control, and pollination, and allowing ecosystems to be more resilient to environmental changes. For instance, diverse soil organisms enable nitrogen fixation and nutrient recycling, while various pollinators ensure that plants can reproduce. A notable example of the impact of biodiversity on an ecosystem is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. As a keystone species, wolves helped to restore balance by controlling elk and coyote populations, leading to the revegetation of riparian areas and an increase in the diversity of other species. Restoration efforts emphasize the importance of biodiversity conservation to maintain the functionality of ecosystems and support human agriculture.

Keystone species are integral in maintaining biodiversity within ecosystems, and their removal can lead to a collapse in ecosystem diversity. The Yellowstone case highlighted the positive effects of reintroducing such species, which included enhancing populations of other species previously suppressed by predators like coyotes. Moreover, maintaining high biodiversity can increase ecosystem productivity, reduce year-to-year variability in productivity, and buffer ecosystems against disturbances. In essence, biodiversity is the life support for ecosystems, playing a role in everything from climate regulation to food production. Therefore, preserving and restoring biodiversity is essential for the health and sustainability of habitats.

Answer 2

Answer: The higher the biodiversity of an Habitat, the more

sustainable it is. Also, lower biodiversity equals less sustainability.

Step-by-step explanation:

The term “biodiversity” is a coined from the phrase “biological diversity”. Biodiversity can be defined as the richness and variety of life of genes, species and ecosystem.

Biodiversity tells us a lot about the health of the biosphere. The greater the variety of species, the healthier the biosphere is. Why is this? This is because; the greater the species, the more links in food chains/webs. Also, the more the genes, the better chances for survival through adaptation.

On the other hand, Sustainability of an ecosystem is the ability of that ecosystem to maintain its structure and function over time in the face of inescapable external stress(e.g deforestation, tornadoes, floods, pollution, etc).

For an ecosystem, sustainability means maintaining ecological processes over long periods of time. These ecological processes includes evolution, food chains and webs, population dynamics, succession. e.t.c

So, if an ecosystem is able to maintain its structure and function over time in the face of external stress, it is said to be sustainable.

FURTHERMORE, The higher biodiversity in an ecosystem means that there is a greater variety of genes and species in that ecosystem. A great variety of genes and species means that the ecosystem is better able to carry out

natural processes. The ecosystem will therefore have more genes and species to help it carry out these processes. For example, there will be more species and more links in food webs, more plants to help with the biogeochemical cycles and more genes available for succession and evolution.