Variation in biological diversity relates to the operations of ecosystems in at least three ways:
1. increase in diversity often leads to an increase in productivity due to complementary traits
among species for resource use, and productivity itself underpins many ecosystem services,
2. increased diversity leads to an increase in response diversity (range of traits related to how
species within the same functional group respond to environmental drivers) resulting in less
variability in functioning over time as environment changes,
3. idiosyncratic effects due to keystone species properties and unique trait-combinations which
may result in a disproportional effect of losing one particular species compared to the effect
of losing individual species at random.