Are communities that have higher species richness more stable than communities that have lower species richness?
1 Answer
Yes, generally speaking- this is because communities with more species and a larger variety of species (that fill more and more specific niches) will be less likely to entirely collapse if some of those species become extinct.
However, we must consider the fact that species diversity also depends on the relative population numbers of each species: if two communities have the same varieties of species but one has more variant population numbers of species, the one with more equal (relatively speaking) population numbers will be more stable (since it is more likely that all of the populations of every species will be able to survive, rather than many of the species becoming extinct in the community due to low population numbers).
Hope this helps!
