Biodiversity and Ecosystem health 1 & 2 Flashcards
What is biodiversity?
All different kinds of life you’ll find in one area - the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms like bacteria that make up our natural world
How many species on planet
11 million species (we know only about 14%)
What levels in ecosystem ?
Individual level (natural selection)
to
Population (population dynamics; evolution)
to
Community ( interaction among species)
to Ecosystem (biotic an abiotic factor + community)
to
Biosphere (global process)
Define ecosystem health?
“The state or condition of an ecosystem in which its dynamic attributes are expressed
within the normal ranges of activity relative to its ecological state of development”
What is ecosystem health?
- function -> productivity within normal range
- Organisation & biodiversity maintained
- Resilient to stress - extent to which
What two things should an ecosystem be?
STABLE & SUSTAINABLE
What is involved in the productivity of an ecosystem?
Food chain:
* Linear representation - route across
trophic levels- transfer of energy
- Arrows - indicate consumption and
the movement of energy and
nutrients.
Food Web:
- Complex and realistic representation
- Community and their inter-relations
What is bottom-up control?
the amount of energy avilable from producers
What is top down control ?
the existence of predators at the top of food web
Define resistance and resilience of an ecosystem?
Resistance: ability to resist change from a disturbance /climate change
Resilience - Recovery time to return to original state
Describe biodiversity importance (first 3 points)
- Biodiversity loss decreases efficiency by when ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle essential nutrients
- Biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time
- Change accelerates as biodiversity loss increases
Describe biodiversity importance (last 3 points)
- Diverse communities are more productive because they contain key
species that have a large influence on productivity, and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture. - Loss of diversity across trophic levels has the potential to influence
ecosystem functions even more strongly than diversity loss within trophic levels. - Functional traits of organisms have large impacts on the magnitude of ecosystem functions, which give rise to a wide range of plausible impacts
of extinction on ecosystem function.
Interaction between biodiversity & pathogens ?
Biodiversity > lots of opportunity for oonotic pathogens BUT this assumes species provide equal opportunity and they don’t
Nature impact on humans (mental) ?
- positive cognitive, brain activity, mental health
psychological wellbeing
How do we monitor biodiversity?
- field guides/ keys/ apps
- Visual
-Audio
n° of species etc
