NEETBotanyBiodiversity and its Conservation
How does species richness affect the productivity of an ecosystem according to Tilman's experiments?
Options
- AIncreased diversity contributed to lower productivity
- BIncreased diversity contributed to higher productivity
- CThere was no relationship between species richness and productivity
- DThe relationship between species richness and productivity was not determined
Correct answer
B. Increased diversity contributed to higher productivity
Step-by-step solution
A stable community should not show too much variation in productivity from year to year; it must be either resistant or resilient to occasional disturbances (natural or man-made), and it must also be resistant to invasions by alien species. We don’t know how these attributes are linked to species richness in a community, but David Tilman’s long-term ecosystem experiments using outdoor plots provide some tentative answers. Tilman found that plots with more species showed less year-to-year variation in total biomass.