The Empiricist's View: Biodiversity is essential for maintaining community stability

•  Charles Elton (1958):

• Simple communities are less stable than diverse ones in that they are more vulnerable to invasions and more likely to experience large fluctuations.

• • Violent fluctuations in population density more common in simplified communities
  • Insect outbreaks rare in diverse tropical forests - common in less diverse sub-tropical forests
  • invasions more frequent in cultivated land than in the wild

Notes: