Biodiversity is the variety of life. It can be studied on many levels. At the highest level, you can look at all the different species on the entire Earth. On a much smaller scale, you can study biodiversity within a pond ecosystem or a neighborhood park. Identifying and understanding the relationships between all the life on Earth are some of the greatest challenges in science.
Rough skinned newt
Most people recognize biodiversity by species. A species is a group of living organisms that can interbreed. Examples of species include, blue whales, white-tailed deer, white pine trees, sunflowers and microscopic bacteria that you cannot even see with your eye. Biodiversity includes the full range of species that live in an area.
Biodiversity at a Glance
Let’s look at the species
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If a reptile species goes extinct, a forest with 20 other reptiles is likely to adapt better than another forest with only one reptile.
Genetic diversity prevents diseases and helps species adjust to changes in their environment.
Simply for the wonder of it all. There are few things as beautiful and inspiring as the diversity of life that exists on Earth.
Threats to Biodiversity
Extinction is a natural part of life on Earth. Over the history of the planet most of the species that ever existed, evolved and then gradually went extinct. Species go extinct because of natural shifts in the environment that take place over long periods of time, such as ice ages.
Today, species are going extinct at an accelerated and dangerous rate, because of non-natural environmental changes caused by human activities. Some of the activities have direct effects on species and ecosystems, such as:
Habitat loss/ degradation
Over exploitation (such as overfishing)
Spread of Non-native Species/ Diseases
Some human activities have indirect but wide-reaching effects on biodiversity,
Environmental change plays an important role in evolution. When an environmental change occurs, it can be a physical or chemical change. It can also be a gradual process such as the formation of mountains, or it can be a rapid and unexpected change, such as a natural disaster. When changes in organism’s environments occur, they must adapt to their new environment, this can cause ample amounts of selective stress and pressure on organisms, causing some species to eventually die out, while other organisms strive and evolve to be better adapted to this change.
Values of the Florida Everglades The Florida Everglades is a national park where animals live in harmony because of this thing called biodiversity. Biodiversity is a word commonly used to "describe the relative number of different species in an ecosystem. " The everglades depend on its ecosystems, that’s how everything stays running and alive. Without the everglades, there wouldn't be as many species, the everglades houses these species and without it, many of them would be extinct or endangered. The everglades play a huge role in the survival of many different plant and animal species.
If people start to clean up after themselves when participating in their recreational activities, the environment will stay healthy. As well as the biodiversity of wildlife. Biodiversity is helpful to the environment here just as it is around the world. Without biodiversity, there would only be one animal in the environment, causing the animal to live of the land and its own species. The animal would most likely, if an omnivore, would only eat a few plants and not all.
Because the earth only has a select amount and cant replenish them with new. Biodiversity: the variety of genes organisms and species and ecosystems in which the organisms live in and interact. The interactions among species like the feeding relationship are providing vital natural services. The
There are no drastic spikes in the populations of any one species, or drops in another. A large number of different species (a great biodiversity) is one indicator of an ecosystem’s health. Remarkably, biodiversity is not necessarily dependent upon the size of the ecosystem; some of the richest ecosystems in the world exist within narrow boundaries (sections of the Amazon rainforest, for example, and the Galapagos Islands). These ecosystems might be relatively small, but besides threat from destructive human behavior, they’re strong because of their biodiversity; each species is connected to the other in some way. If a healthy ecosystem is one that is home to many different species, mostly native to the area and all interdependent upon one another, what’s an example of an unhealthy ecosystem?
Humans can destroy habitats by deforestation, construction,
Imagine a world where dinosaurs exist again… a Jurassic World. Should scientists bring back extinct species, like that of the dinosaurs? De-extinction is no longer a thing of science fiction; scientists have been trying to clone a Wooly Mammoth since the summer of 2011. Sadly scientists have said that the actual dinosaurs, like that of a T-Rex, have been dead for too long and therefore cannot be brought back. De-
Wildlife Conservation is often seen as a bad thing, but if you look at it from my perspective, then it is actually a good thing. People think of it as holding wild animals captive, but we are actually protecting them from poachers. The purpose of Wildlife Conservation is to protect the animals in danger, which I am in agreement 110%. Other people argue that we shouldn’t have conservations, but they don’t know the harm that can happen to unprotected animals.
The last example is ecological biodiversity, which is the variation in SC160 Basic Biology Assignment 08 the ecosystems that are found in a region or the whole planet. We see this type of biodiversity evolution all around us. For example, the forest of Maine versus the forests of Colorado. Plant and Animal
Introduction: Biodiversity is important for all living organism including plants and animals. Without biodiversity, there would be no balance between organism and their environment. Biodiversity helps to maintain the balance of nature to sustain all life on earth; one species will not overpower another because of the effect of biodiversity. Not only does biodiversity maintain the balance of nature it is also used to indicate health in the aquatic community. Dissolved-oxygen is measured in the aquatic environment to test the health of the water.
The extinction rate is one hundred to a thousand times greater than it was before the human species evolved on the planet. Currently, Earth is in its sixth mass extinction, with one sixth of all species going extinct. If all of these species go extinct, humans will also be greatly harmed (Worrall). Humans can not continue without the great interconnected biodiversity we currently have, because all animals on the planet are inter-connected in their habits and way of life. If we begin to destroy minor food chains from small-scale animals going extinct, greater and greater
These explanations are persuasive in their own right, but ecologists have increased some additional to deal with, like what would be the resultant of alteration of biodiversity on ecosystem properties, such as productivity, carbon storage, hydrology, and nutrient cycling? The apparent follow-up problem is what are the resultant of resemble largely anthropogenic alteration in biodiversity on the goods and services that ecosystems give to humans? If altered biodiversity affects ecosystem lot, is there a point at which changes in the lot might have a negative influence in human welfare? That is, those problems that being answered step by step by our own biodiversity, climate change, ozone layer begins to release the air or gas, and
A lot of people think that zoos are good because they help repopulate, but no one thought that the only reason why we need to repopulate some species, was because of poaching and hunting. If people never had poaching and hunting, most animals are capable out there in the wild. On the other hand, Zoos have research programs that help expand our knowledge about animals, especially the endangered species. The information gained by these programs can help protect and treat the species in the wild, as well as determine what effects if any climate change may have on the regions needed for the species to flourish. Many zoos also have breeding programs for all kinds of species, endangered or not, and learn even more about the species during the breeding, and rearing process.
Balance of natural processes like pollution is crucial to the survival of the eco-system and human activity threatens the same. Another example is the destruction of coral reefs in the various oceans, which support the rich marine life. •
Hence, deforestation increases. This is another effect of overpopulation that impacts the worsening of the environment [2]. For example decreased forest size increases the amount of carbon in the environment. More specifically, deforestation affects the wildlife and results in biodiversity loss and species extinction [1].