3.7 Components of biodiversity

Question 1

What are components of biodiversity?

Answer 1

• genetic diversity
• species diversity
• ecosystem diversity

Question 2

What is genetic diversity?

Answer 2

the number and frequency of all the alleles within a population

Question 3

What is species diversity?

Answer 3

• comprises the number of different species in an ecosystem (species richness)
• and the proportion of each species in the ecosystem (the relative abundance)

Question 4

What is ecosystem diversity?

Answer 4

-the number of distinct ecosystems within a defined area

Question 5

What is the effect of one population of a species dying out?

Answer 5

• the species may have lost some of its genetic diversity

- this may limit its ability to adapt to changing conditions

Question 6

Compare a community with a dominant species and a community without a dominant species

Answer 6

• a community with a dominant species has a lower species diversity
• than one with the same species richness but no particularly dominant species