What is Biodiversity?

Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is multidimensional and represents not only the number of species, but also the abundance and ecological function of each species.

For example, this lake is composed of a very diverse variety of fish, including four different known species inhabiting four different ecological niches: surface plankton eaters, fish predators, algae scrapers, and scavenging bottom feeders.

Other important indices of biodiversity include both genetic and ecosystem diversity. On an organismic and population level, the future success of the entire species depends on the amount of genetic variation present in individual genomes within the population.

On a higher level, ecosystems can support many different species. An ecosystem loss can result in a drastic decline in biodiversity. For instance, in a marine ecosystem, loss of coral species due to climate change results in the loss of the numerous fish, invertebrate, and plant species that inhabit reef ecosystems.