Components of biodiversity Flashcards
What are the 3 types of diveristy
Genetic, species, ecosystem
What is genetic diversity?
Number and frequency of all the alleles in a population.
What is the effect of a population dying out on genetic diversity?
species may have lost some of its genetic diversity, and this may limit its ability to evolve successfully by adapting to changing environmental conditions
What is species diveristy?
Species diversity comprises the number of different species in an ecosystem (the species richness) and the proportion of each species in the ecosystem (the relative abundance)
What is species richness?
the number of different species in an ecosystem
What is the relative species abundance?
the proportion of each species in the ecosystem
How does having a dominant species affect species diversity?
Because species diversity is dependent upon both the species richness and their relative abundance, a community with a dominant species will have a lower species diversity than one with the same species richness but no particularly dominant species.
What is ecosystem diversity?
the number of distinct ecosystems within a defined area