Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem functioning. Ecosystem processes are driven by the species in an ecosystem, the nature of the individual species, and the relative abundance of organisms within these species. Ecosystem processes are broad generalizations that take place through the actions of individual organisms. The nature of the organisms—the species, functional groups and trophic levels to which they belong—dictates the sorts of actions these individuals are capable of carrying out and the relative efficiency with which they do so.