what is biodiversity?
Answers
Answer:
Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth.
Answer:
Biodiversity describes the richness and variety of life on earth. It is the most complex and important feature of our planet. Without biodiversity, life would not sustain.
The term biodiversity was coined in 1985. It is important in natural as well as artificial ecosystems. It deals with nature’s variety, the biosphere. It refers to variabilities among plants, animals and microorganism species.
Biodiversity includes the number of different organisms and their relative frequencies in an ecosystem. It also reflects the organization of organisms at different levels.
Biodiversity holds ecological and economic significance. It provides us with nourishment, housing, fuel, clothing and several other resources. It also extracts monetary benefits through tourism. Therefore, it is very important to have a good knowledge of biodiversity for a sustainable livelihood.
Types of Biodiversity
Species diversity
Species diversity refers to the variety of different types of species found in a particular area. It is the biodiversity at the most basic level. It includes all the species ranging from plants to different microorganisms.
No two individuals of the same species are exactly similar. For example, humans show a lot of diversity among themselves.
Genetic diversity
It refers to the variations among the genetic resources of the organisms. Every individual of a particular species differs from each other in their genetic constitution. That is why every human looks different from each other. Similarly, there are different varieties in the same species of rice, wheat, maize, barley, etc.
Ecological diversity
An ecosystem is a collection of living and non-living organisms and their interaction with each other. Ecological biodiversity refers to the variations in the plant and animal species living together and connected by food chains and food webs.
It is the diversity observed among the different ecosystems in a region. Diversity in different ecosystems like deserts, rainforests, mangroves, etc., include ecological diversity.