Biodiversity and

conservation
Lecture#01
Biodiversity
 Definition of Biodiversity as defines in the
Convention of biological Diversity (CBD):
 “ the variability among living organisms from all
sources including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic
ecosystem and the ecological complexes of which they
are a part: this includes the diversity within species
between species and of ecosystem.”
Importance of Biodiversity
Assets of nation
Source of products
Goods & services
Inter-relationship
Conservation of resources
Adaptation
Types of Biodiversity
There are three types of biodiversity:
1. Species diversity
2. Ecological diversity
3. Genetic diversity
1. Species diversity
“ It refers to the variety among the living organisms or
species (wild or domestic) with in a geographic area.”
It includes all the flora and fauna of area.
2. Ecological diversity
“It refers to the variety of plants, animals and
microbial communities their interaction with non
living environment and the ecological processes that
make them functional.”
3. Genetic diversity
“ It refers to the variability in the genes that every
individual inherits from their parents and passes it
onto next generation.”
It is important for the survival of speices.
Species
Smallest independently evolving unit.
Species follow independent evolutionary tracks.
About 22 different species concepts exists.
Species are dynamic , evolving individuals.
Much of systematic, taxonomic, ecological,
physiological studies are conducted at species level.
Primary concept
The entities that we envision as species represent
fundamental components or “building blocks” in the
natural sciences.
In the history of this planet, through selection and
drift, speciation has produced entities we call “species”.
Concept of species
The significance of species and our conceptual view of
them- as naturally occuring by-products of descent- is
noted:
“the species concept is crucial to the study of
biodiversity. Not to have a natural unit such as
the specie would be abandon a large part of
biology into free fall, all the way from the
ecosystem down to the organism”
Darwins’s idea about species
Darwin (1859) felt that species were similar in kind to
groupings at lower and higher taxonomic levels; in
contrast, most recent authors suggest that species are more
objectively identifiable, and thus more ‘‘real’’ than, say,
populations or genera.
Today, much of ecology and biodiversity appears to depend
on the idea that the species is the fundamental taxon, and
many have argued that these fields could be undermined if,
say, genera, or subspecies, had the same logical status as
species.
Species concepts originate in taxonomy, where the
species is ‘‘the basic rank of classification’’ according to
the International Commission of Zoological
Nomenclature.