Describe the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Explain why moderate levels of disturbance may crate conditions that foster greater species diversity than low or high levels of disturbance.

The intermediate disturbance hypothesis suggests that local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent.

At high levels of disturbance, due to frequent forest fires or human impacts like deforestation, all species are at risk of going extinct.

At intermediate levels of disturbance, diversity is thus maximized because species that thrive at both early and late successional stages can coexist.

If disturbance is rare, the climax will be established and diversity reduced according to the competitive exclusion principle. This principle states that two or more resource-limited species, having identical patterns of resource use, cannot coexist in a stable environment: one species will be better adapted and will out-compete or otherwise eliminate the others