Eli5 : Why is biodiversity important ?
In: Biology
It’s same as what farmers do. They have multiple crops because:
-if one crop dies from disease or drought the others still live.
-by switching crops for each field every year the soil does not get “tired” (all same type nutrients get used up) and crop specific diseases don’t stick in the soil
Same argument could be made for biodiversity in general. As long as there is a good balance between species the surroundings can accommodate. If there is one species which is very dominant the environment gets killed off and therefore also the species.
In the Netherlands we had for example a nature reserve with too many horses in it. They ate all the grass and plants, a certain type of inedible plant took over because there was no competition, other animals died off because they lived off of other plants which were now pushed out by the inedible plants, etc.. the whole system collapses.
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