Final answer:
Multiple species within an ecosystem can be wiped out by catastrophic events, such as asteroid impacts and volcanic activity, or by gradual changes like climate shifts and human-induced habitat destruction. These events can lead to mass extinctions, effectively resetting the biological diversity by erasing some species while allowing others to evolve and occupy new niches.
Step-by-step explanation:
Multiple plant and animal species can get wiped out together within the same ancient ecosystem due to large-scale environmental disruptions such as asteroid impacts, volcanic activity, climate change, and more recent human activities like habitat destruction and pollution. The most recent mass extinction event 65 million years ago, which famously resulted in the demise of the dinosaurs, was triggered by an asteroid impact. Subsequent extinctions have been linked to factors like volcanic activity and climate change, sometimes associated with the evolution of new species or geological processes. The Ordovician-Silurian extinction event, for instance, was tied to climate changes from cooling and then warming, potentially exacerbated by a gamma-ray burst from a supernova.
Habitat destruction, such as that caused by slash-and-burn agriculture in Madagascar, has also resulted in significant biodiversity loss. This not only leads to the extinction of individual species, but also the collapse of entire ecosystems and the loss of their unique features and biological productivity. An example of this is the prairie ecosystem in North America, which has been largely replaced by agricultural and urban development. Moreover, the high rate of biodiversity loss, particularly in high-diversity ecosystems like tropical rainforests, is expected to have critical repercussions on human welfare, including challenges in maintaining food production, clean air and water, and human health.
Cataclysmic events that cause mass extinctions also create opportunities for evolutionary bursts, as new species evolve to fill empty niches. This was the case for mammals, which diversified following the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period.