Biology 5C~Lecture 12 (Community Characteristics 2)

Communities with higher diversity are:

-More productive and more stable in their productivity
-Better able to withstand and recover from environmental stresses
-More resistant to invasive species

Patterns in species diversity:

-latitude
-area
-disturbance
----------> habitat size:
----------> species-area curves
----------> poles to tropics

Diversity patterns: Latitude

-The closer you are to the equator, the higher the species diversity and richness
-the farther you are to the equator, the lower the species diversity and richness

Species-area curve:

Quantifies the idea that, all other factors being equal, a larger geographic area has more species
-Larger areas tend to have higher colonization rates and lower extinction rates
-The species-area relationship can be described mathematically

Disturbance:

any event that changes a community by removing organisms from it or altering resource availability
-Vary in both frequency and intensity
-species diversity may be maximal at intermediate levels