Count down to Expo!

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            Biodiversity is essential to functioning ecosystems on both a smaller personal scale, as well as the greater biosphere of our world.  Diverse communities are generally healthier than monoliths (only one species spread across a large area). (NWF, 2017)  A lack of biodiversity is often harmful to soil quality, which kills of producers in a food web.  This in turn removes essential consumers that act as prey for other organisms. (Beyond Pesticides, 2017)

            While biodiversity sounds like an immensely large issue, it affects small ecosystems like gardens.  By using pesticides in gardens, a large amount of species lose access to their food source.  While insectoid pests have many negative impacts on vulnerable plant species, pesticides kill off these insects and also remove them as a food source.  Larger animals that consume these insects lose a major food source. (PAN, 2017)

            While the idea of introducing a new species into an ecosystem in order to combat pests sounds like it would create the same problem, often times it creates a new food source for larger predators.  Many small rodents eat both aphids and ladybugs, even though ladybugs are a natural predator to aphids.  By adding a new species into the ecosystem, you both increase the amount of predators that one species (typically the pest) has, while also allowing the predators to compete with one another, removing the added species after the prey has been exterminated. 

           More species in an ecosystem leads to an increased number of predators and prey, which doesn't exist in pesticide ridden environments.  While the actually chemical used as a pesticide doesn't directly destroy biodiversity, it does remove an important level of the ecosystem, thus harming species higher up the food chain. (DEE, 2017)