The intermediate disturbance hypothesis predicts that communities with intermediate levels of disturbance will have the most diversity. If disturbances become too rare, competitive dominants will eliminate other species, reducing diversity as equilibrium conditions develop.
The intermediate disturbance hypothesis predicts that the highest levels of diversity will occur at moderate disturbance levels. We investigated the species diversity, abundance, and species diversity of bacteria on the human body in relation to washing disturbance. According to IDH theory, diversity is maximized at intermediate levels of disturbance because species that thrive at both early and late successional stages can coexist. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) proposes that when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent, local species diversity is maximized.
