Biodiversity

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 Biodiversity

● Biodiversity refers to the variety of all forms of life, from genes to

species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems

● There are patterns in the distribution of biodiversity – biodiversity is not

uniform across the globe

● What causes some areas to be more biodiverse?

● Environmental conditions
● Hot spots
● Extreme environments  specialists

● Related to the health of an ecosystem – biodiversity can convey

resilience
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 Why Does Biodiversity Matter?

• Agriculture
• Human health
• Business and Manufacturing
• Tourism
• Ecosystem Services

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 Types of Biodiversity

• Species Diversity
• Ecosystem Diversity
• Genetic Diversity

wikipedia

Wikimedia

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 Evolution Leads to Biodiversity

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 How much Biodiversity is there?

● 10–30 million insects; (of some 0.9 million we know

today)
● 5–10 million bacteria;
● 1.5 million fungi;(of some 0.075 million we know
today)
10-30 million
insects within
the kingdom
animalia
5-10
million
bacteria 1.5 million fungi

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 How do we study biodiversity?

• What level are we interested in?

– Ecosystem
– Species
– Population
– Genetics

• This determines our method – would we look with

our eyes? With a microscope? With an experiment?
• Tomorrow we will start

measuring biodiversity

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 How will we study Biodiversity on a kelp?

• Kelp Lab
How many organisms are on the kelp?
Abundance
How many types of organisms are on the kelp?
Diversity
Are there the same number of each type of organism?
Relative Abundance

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 Conclusions

● Biodiversity is literally the “spice of life”

● Having lots of types of organisms in an ecosystem means all the

jobs get done! (decomposers, recyclers, top predators etc.)

● We can measure biodiversity in lots of ways depending on what

question we want to answer

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