BIODIVERSITY 3.1 Flashcards
What is Biodiveristy?
Biodiversity → The variety of all life forms on earth - the different plants, animals and micro-organisms and the ecosystems of which they are a part of.
Biodiversity is important everywhere; species and habitats in your area as well as those in distant lands all play a role in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
The ability to both understand and quantify biodiversity is important to conservation efforts.
It is often used to evaluate the health and complexity of an ecological area
How do we value Biodiversity?
We value biodiversity both for what it provides to humans (utilitarian), and for the value it has in its own right (intrinsic).
Utalitarian
The many basic needs humans obtain from biodiversity such as: food, fuel, shelter, and medicine. Further, ecosystems provide crucial services such as: pollination, seed dispersal, climateregulation, water purification, nutrient cycling, and control of agricultural pests.
Intrinsic
Refers to the inherent worth of nature and the variety of life forms, independent of any human use or benefit. In essence, it emphasizes the significance of biodiversity for its own sake. Biodiversity has cultural value to humans as well, for spiritual or religious reasons for instance.
Importance of Biodiversity
Ecosystem Stability → Makes them more resilient
Economic Benefits → Supports industries such as the agricultural industry
Cultural Value
Climate Regulation → By storing carbon, mitigating the impacts of climate change, and contributing to the overall balance of global ecosystems.
3 Types of Biodiversity
Species, Habitat and Genetic.
Biodiveristy Depends on:
Succession → Succession increases species diversity as there are new habitats being formed and a more complex ecosystem has been formed.
Greater habitat diversity leads to greater species and genetic diversity.
A complex ecosystem, with its variety of nutrient and energy pathways, provides stability
Human activities modify succession, for example, logging, grazing, burning
Human activities often simplify ecosystems, rendering them unstable, for example, North America wheat farming versus tall grass prairie
An ecosystem’s capacity to survive change may depend on diversity, resilience and inertia
Species Diversity
Species diversity is defined as the number of species and abundance of each species that live in a particular location. The number of species that live in a certain location is called species richness. The higher the species diversity of a community or ecosystem, the greater the complexity.
Higher the species diversity = greater ability to support different niches
Richness
A measure of the number of different species in an area; more species means a richer environment. However, no account is taken of how common or rare each species is.
Evenness
Looks at the relative abundance of the species. It therefore takes into account the abundance or scarcity of each species and eliminates the problems of just analyzing species richness in an area.
A community with high evenness has a similar abundance of all species; low evenness means one or few dominant species, indicating lower complexity.
Habitat Diveristy
It refers to the range of different habitats in an ecosystem or biome. Habitat diversity is often associated with the variety of ecological niches.
Habitat diversity is made up of several components. Perhaps the most easily recognized component of habitat diversity is vegetative diversity.
Vegetative diversity: the number of different species of vegetation present. The greater the number of species, the greater the vegetative diversity.
If there is a large number of different habitats within an area, then that area has high biodiversity
Genetic Diversity
The range of genetic material present in a population of a species. Each individual species possesses genes which are the source of its own unique features.
The term genetic diversity also covers distinct populations of a single species, such as the thousands of breeds of different dogs or the numerous varieties of roses.
Low diversity can be an indicator of..
Pollution, eutrophication or recent colonization of a site. The number of species present in an area is often indicative of general patterns of biodiversity.
Why is the quantification of biodiversity important?
It is important to conservation efforts so that areas of high biodiversity may be identified, explored, and appropriate conservation put in place where possible. The ability to assess changes to biodiversity in a given community over time is important in assessing the impact of human activity in the community.
Biodiversity Hotspots
Areas with high biodiversity. They contain large numbers of endemic species (species not found anywhere else), and so measures of biodiversity are essential in identifying areas that should be protected against damaging human activities
