Answer: Note in Figure 2 that as species richness increases, immigration rate decreases, and extinction
rate increases. At some value of species richness, the two lines cross, indicating that
immigration and extinction rates are equal. At that point, species richness is at equilibrium. In
this figure, equilibrium species richness is a little less than 400 species.
2. It is stable, as you can see from examination of Figure 2. When species richness is less than
the equilibrium value, the immigration rate is higher than the extinction rate, and so species
richness will increase. If species richness exceeds the equilibrium value, the extinction rate is
greater than the immigration rate, and species richness will decrease. Thus, even if species
richness deviates from the equilibrium value, it tends to return to it.
Explanation:It is a dynamic equilibrium. Figure 2 shows that when species richness is at equilibrium,
immigration and extinction are both still greater than zero: thus even though overall species
richness has reached equilibrium, individual species are still going extinct and new species are
still arriving. In this example, the rates of immigration and extinction are equal at about 20
(e.g., in units of species per year). This is the turnover rate.
4. Examine Figure 4, the graph of immigration rates for islands at three distances from the
mainland.
You should see that the immigration line for the near island is the steepest and the line for the
far island is the shallowest. Consequently, the immigration line for the near island crosses the
extinction line farthest to the right, and that for the far island, farthest to the left.
If you drop a vertical line from each of the three crossing points to the horizontal axis, you
will see that the near island has the highest equilibrium species richness (about 550), and the
far island has the lowest Hope this helps :(