Species Diversity and Ecosystems

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (biotic) interacting with each other and their non-living environment (abiotic).An ecosystem with a lot of biodiversity will function well because it will be more stable and affected less by change.If there is an environmental change such as a drought the greater the biodiversity the more likely there is at least one species in the ecosystem who will tolerate the drought and some members of the community survive.In extreme environments the species diversity is usually low since only a few organisms are likely to have the adaptations to survive in the extreme conditions.This results in an unstable ecosystem dominated by the climate.