In: Biology
Increasing which of the following factors will most likely increase local species richness across the broadest range of conditions?
A. The number of different kinds of resources or habitats present
B. Environmental stress
C. Interspecific Competition
D. the frequency of disturbance
E. nutrient supply
Increasing the number of different kinds of resources or habitats present will most likely increase local species richness across the broadest range of conditions.
Species diversity tends to increase with habitat heterogeneity.
Communities that have increased habitat variation have an increased
number of ways to divide up the available niches. The number or
variation of available niches varies by organism-type. Plant niches
tend to be defined by different variables than animal niches. Plant
species richness may vary with variation in local soil properties.
Animal species richness may vary with the complexity of the habitat
form, for example vegetation structure. Thus habitat heterogeneity
is both context and species dependent.
Likewise, if essential resources are heterogeneously distributed across a metacommunity, single species may dominate productivity in individual metacommunity patches, but a mixture of species will maximize productivity across the whole metacommunity. A balanced supply of resources within local patches should favor species coexistence, whereas resource imbalance would favor the dominance of one species.