Question

Does the number of species in a community really matter to the functioning of the ecosystem?

Answer 1

Part 1: Ecosystem
Ecosystem is an interacting system between the biotic and abiotic components. The species number and diversity plays an important part in the functioning of this unit.

Part 2: Attributes of a healthy ecosystem
A functional and healthy ecosystem has two main features as follows:-

• Stability- The ecosystem with more species will show less variation in its productivity irrespective of environmental changes or alien species invasion.
• High productivity- Since an increase in species number increases the efficiency of food webs, the net productivity also increases. This makes the ecosystem resilient.