Genuine question. I was talking to someone recently and they asked me this and while I had some answers (mentioned below), I didn’t have confidence in my answers.
I know climate change is a threat to biodiversity and that it’s important to preserve it but I was never told why biodiversity is important. Is it to keep ecosystems in check (I feel like this is probably one of the most important reasons)? Is it to just give humans a bunch of species to look at and appreciate? Is it to ensure that if the human population died, some forms of life would remain that would be fit for whatever catastrophe affected human populations and keep life going?
Is it all of these things? Any other reasons?
Thank you!
In: Biology
Think of it this way:
If there were only humans and human’s solely survived on eating apples, everything is great, we farm enough apples to feed everyone and it’s good. There’s no other plants, we don’t need them, we have apples.
Suddenly, there’s a new disease or weather condition that wipes out all the apples. Now humans have nothing to eat and they all starve. If only there were some other plants around humans could have eaten instead.
Our food chain relies a lot on nature and other animals. Insects polinate a lot of our food, which we need for example. Large amounts of biodiversity helps keep all the existing eco systems and food chains in balance. The more diverse, the less impact one part of it being harmed has.
Going back to my original example. Instead of just eating apples, humans now survive on all kinds of foods, as we actually do. Now, a disease wipes out all the apples, people miss apples but humans survive because we have other food sources.
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