Biodiversity describes the variety that exists on Earth, which includes many species of plants and animals, as well as the ecosystems in which they live and the genetic diversity among them. Through this article, you will learn about the diversity of living things and their interactions.
What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity includes many of the living species on Earth, their relationship with each other, as well as the different genes, ecosystems and species, nature can recover from the changes that occur since it is composed of a wide variety of living organisms.
However, the situation poses a problem if the loss of Biodiversity is too great, because our survival depends on it, ecosystems, for example, are extremely important because they produce oxygen and clean the soil and water.
Biodiversity plays an important role in all ecosystems, not only in those that are natural, for example, in orchards or nature reserves, but also in those that were created and managed by man, such as orchards, seedbeds and even gardens of the city, Biodiversity is the focus of the many advantages that ecosystems offer people.
Measuring Biodiversity is quite difficult, even using modern equipment and data sources, but answers are seldom necessary to adequately reach the essence of the phenomenon, how it changes, as well as the causes and consequences of any change.
A series of environmental indicators are used to assess various aspects of Biodiversity, such as the number of species in a given area, they are an essential component of monitoring, evaluation and decision making and are designed for quick and easy communication, however, no single indicator can capture all aspects of Biodiversity.
Origin and evolution of the term
Biodiversity , from genes to landscapes, is the product of a long evolution; therefore, it is the theory of evolution that provides the conceptual architecture to understand its emergence and structuring, while ecological theories provide a general framework to understand the rules of interaction between the units of Biodiversity and their environment.
In a context of unprecedented anthropogenic modifications, it is important to analyze the branches of Biodiversity from a dual ecological and evolutionary perspective. In a somewhat schematic way, we can group the activities related to this topic into three groups, namely, the description of the patterns of Biodiversity, the analysis of the forces that act on Biodiversity, as well as the interaction with man and the changes that he induces.
Describing Biodiversity responds to a double need, the first refers to the classification of living organisms at all levels of perception, of the genomes of communities, we cover, in particular, the field of systematics.
The second is the characterization of the distribution patterns of Biodiversity in order to infer the forces that make them evolve, therefore, taking into account the environment is essential due to the strong interaction between the units of Biodiversity and the environment.
Evolutionary and ecological theories provide a framework for interpreting this biodiversity and the elementary forces that modify it. We can cite natural selection and competition between species as deterministic forces and genetic and ecological derivations as stochastic forces. This component is supported by disciplinary fields such as population genetics, quantitative genetics, or community ecology.
Human activities influence more or less, directly or indirectly, in all ecosystems and therefore must be taken into account in any research on Biodiversity, we can consider a gradient of anthropization, which goes from ecosystems almost above the ground to ecosystems with little impact on certain equatorial forests.
Scientific topics are related, for example, to resistance to pesticides, the introduction of new species or interactions between wild species and related species, the fields of research range from biology and ecology to human and social sciences, such as economics, geography or ethnobiology, in a strongly interdisciplinary approach.
Man, an actor in the evolution of Biodiversity, can also become an object of study, a classic field, the description of Biodiversity and the understanding of its evolution constitute for several decades an extremely active field of research that mobilizes a growing number of researchers and research units.
The work is carried out on living and fossil materials and on levels of intelligence ranging from genes to ecosystems, the range of levels of spatial and temporal perception is therefore considerably extensive, all the more so that, even if the emphasis is in Mediterranean and warm ecosystems, all the planet's ecosystems are taken into account.
Biodiversity and evolution
Biodiversity encompasses all living beings in the infinity of their variations and interactions, from individuals to ecosystems, including populations and species, but it is also a dynamic balance between extinction and divergence that allows the proliferation of life and its adaptation on our planet.
Evolution is the engine of Biodiversity, the extinction of species is a natural phenomenon of this dynamic balance, it is compensated by the divergence that allows the appearance of new populations better adapted to their environment, which sooner or later will be modified.
The totality of the living present today on our planet is the fruit of this dynamic balance at work since the appearance of life, generation after generation, the living reinvent themselves, creating Biodiversity.
Members of the Evolution and Biodiversity theme conduct research on various aspects of Biodiversity from evolutionary and conservation-related perspectives, current research on adaptation includes the evolution of flower form in response to animal pollinators, the genetic bases of adaptation and evolution and the maintenance of social and mating systems.
The traditional view is that species have increased in diversity continuously over the last 200 million years, particularly the last 100 million, leading to more diversity now than ever before, but some recent studies suggest that Biodiversity has tended to remain pretty much the same, with only occasional increases.
Types of Biodiversity
Biologists have recognized different measures of Biodiversity, some of which are significant in planning how to safeguard Biodiversity.
Genetic Biodiversity
Genetic diversity is an alternate concept of Biodiversity, genetic diversity is the raw material for adjustment in a species, the virtual future of accommodation of a species depends on the genetic diversity maintained in the genomes of individuals in the localities that have the species.
The same is true for higher taxonomic categories, a genus with very different species types will have more genetic diversity than a genus with species that look alike and have similar ecologies, the genus with the greatest potential for further evolution is the most genetically diverse .
Most genes code for proteins, which in turn carry out the metabolic processes that keep organisms alive and reproducing, genetic diversity can also be thought of as chemical diversity in that species with different genetic compositions produce different assortments of chemicals in your cells (proteins, as well as the products and byproducts of metabolism).
This chemical diversity is important to humans because of the potential uses of these chemicals as drugs. For example, the drug eptifibatide is derived from rattlesnake venom and is used to prevent heart attacks in people with certain heart conditions. .
At present, it is far cheaper to reveal compounds made by an organism than to imagine and then synthesize them in a laboratory, chemical diversity is a way of calculating diversity that is significant to human health and well-being.
Through selective breeding, humans have domesticated animals, plants, and fungi, but even this diversity is suffering losses due to market forces and increased globalism in agriculture and human migration.
Diversity of ecosystems
It is also useful to define ecosystem diversity, the number of different ecosystems on Earth or in a geographic area, entire ecosystems can disappear even if some of the species can survive by adapting to other ecosystems, the loss of an ecosystem means the loss of the interactions between species, the loss of unique characteristics of co-adaptation and the loss of biological productivity that an ecosystem can create.
An example of a largely extinct ecosystem in North America is the prairie ecosystem, the prairies once spanned central North America from the boreal forest in northern Canada to Mexico, they are now all but gone, replaced by farmland, pasture, and suburban sprawl.
Many of the species survive, but the hugely productive ecosystem that was responsible for creating our most productive agricultural soils no longer exists, as a consequence its soils are now being depleted unless artificially maintained at greater cost.
The decrease in soil productivity occurs because the interactions in the original ecosystem have been lost; This was a far more significant loss than the relatively few species that went extinct when the prairie ecosystem was destroyed.
Species diversity
Despite considerable effort, knowledge of the species that inhabit the planet is limited, with one recent estimate suggesting that the species of eukaryotes for which science has names, about 1,5 million species, represent less than 20 percent percent of the total number of eukaryotic species present on the planet (8,7 million species, according to one estimate).
Estimates of the number of prokaryotic species are largely guesswork, but biologists agree that science has only just begun to catalog their diversity—even with what is known, there is no centralized repository of species names or samples. described; therefore, there is no way to be sure that XNUMX million descriptions is an exact number.
It is a best guess based on the opinions of experts in different taxonomic groups, since the Earth is losing species at a fast rate, it presents recent estimates of Biodiversity in different groups.
Importance of Biodiversity
Biodiversity is an expression developed for biological plurality and can be calculated at different organizational levels, ecologists have measured Biodiversity taking into account both the number of species and the number of individuals in each of those species.
However, measures of Biodiversity at various levels of biological organization, including genes, populations, and ecosystems, are being used by biologists to help focus efforts to preserve biologically and technologically important elements of Biodiversity.
From the perspective of evolution and ecology, the loss of a particular individual species, with a few exceptions, may seem unimportant, but the current accelerating rate of extinction means the loss of tens of thousands of species in our lifetimes.
Much of this loss is occurring in tropical forests like the one shown here, which are especially highly diverse ecosystems that are being cleared for timber and agriculture, this is likely to have dramatic effects on human well-being through the collapse of ecosystems and in additional costs to maintain food production, clean air and water, and improve human health.
Human health
Many medicines are derived from natural chemicals made by a diverse group of organisms. For example, many plants produce secondary plant compounds, which are toxins used to protect the plant from insects and other animals that eat them.
Many of these secondary plant aggregates also function as human medicines, and contemporary societies living close to land often have extensive knowledge of the medicinal uses of plants that thrive in their area.
For centuries in Europe, previous knowledge about the medical uses of plants was compiled into herbs, books that identified plants and their uses, humans are not the only animals that use plants for medicinal reasons, the other great apes, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have been observed self-medicating with plants.
Many drugs were derived from plant extracts but are now synthesized, it is estimated that at one time 25 percent of modern drugs contained at least one plant extract, that number has likely dropped to about 10 percent to as natural plant ingredients are replaced by synthetic versions of plant compounds.
Antibiotics, which are responsible for extraordinary improvements in health and life expectancy in developed countries, are compounds derived largely from fungi and bacteria.
In addition to representing billions of dollars in profits, these drugs improve people's lives, pharmaceutical companies are actively looking for new natural compounds that can work as medicines.
It can be seen that a third of pharmaceutical research and progress is wasted on natural combinations and that nearly thirty-five percent of the new drugs introduced to the market between 1981 and 2002 come from natural compounds.
Finally, it has been argued that humans benefit psychologically from living in a biodiverse world, the main proponent of this idea being the entomologist Wilson.
He argues that human evolutionary history has adapted us to live in a natural environment and that built environments generate stresses that affect human health and well-being, there is considerable research on the psychologically regenerative benefits of natural landscapes suggesting that the hypothesis may be true
Agricultural
Since the beginning of human agriculture, more than 10.000 years ago, human groups have been breeding and selecting crop varieties, this crop diversity matching the cultural diversity of highly subdivided populations of humans.
For example, potatoes were domesticated starting around 7,000 years ago in the central Andes of Peru and Bolivia, the people of this region traditionally living in relatively isolated settlements separated by mountains.
The potatoes grown in that region belong to seven species and the number of varieties is probably in the thousands. Each variety has been bred to thrive at particular elevations and soil conditions, also depending on the elements of climate . The diversity is driven by the diverse demands of dramatic elevation changes and the limited movement of people.
Potatoes are just one example of agricultural diversity, every plant, animal and fungus that has been cultivated by humans has been bred from original wild ancestral species in diverse varieties arising from demands for food value, adaptation to growing conditions growth and pest resistance.
Crop failure led to famine, death, and mass emigration; disease resistance is a major benefit for maintaining crop biodiversity , and a lack of diversity in contemporary crop species carries similar risks.
Seed companies, which are the source for most crop varieties in developed countries, must continually breed new varieties to keep up with evolving pest organisms.
However, these same seed companies have been involved in decreasing the number of varieties available as they focus on selling fewer varieties in more areas of the world, replacing traditional landraces.
The ability to create new crop varieties depends on the diversity of varieties available and the availability of wild forms related to the crop plant, these wild forms are often the source of new genetic variants that can be bred with existing varieties to create new varieties. with new attributes.
The loss of wild species associated with a crop will mean the loss of potential for crop improvement. Maintaining the genetic diversity of wild species related to domesticated species ensures our continued food supply.
Biodiversity Assessment
Different species occupy different niches in the web of life. Knowing which species inhabit an ecosystem, and how many of each type there are, is fundamental to understanding the structure and function of that ecosystem, and predicting future changes. Scientists who observe the variation of life in a forest, a stream, or a piece of land are observing its biodiversity.
When scientists assess the Biodiversity of an area, they look at the species richness, how many different species exist and the relative exuberance, the number of entities that each species has, a healthy ecosystem is balanced, with enough predators, prey, producers and decomposers to keep the food chain strong.
When the system gets out of balance, that web can quickly come undone, forests can struggle to grow when deer populations explode, or fish near the top of the food chain can suffer when small organisms at the bottom die out, but when Biodiversity levels are correct, it can strengthen the ecosystem to better resist stresses such as climate change and invasive species.
Biologists survey Biodiversity throughout the coastal zone, some of the species they track, such as blue crabs, are already known and loved, others have left their mark as invasive species, examine aquatic creatures in the water and take censuses of trees in the forest.
Parameters
The level of biodiversity in a given area depends, among other things, on the number of species that occur in that area; islands or valleys, for example, are periodically determined by a high degree of endemism, that is, species that are only found in a specific habitat.
When comparing two areas, it is essential to analyze them not only in terms of species richness, but also with respect to the rarity of the species present, the relationship between the area-specific endemic species and the more widespread (eg cosmopolitan) species is of great importance in this context.
Dynamic
While single ecosystem functions may be replaced by non-native species, non-native species may also decrease the value or overall provisioning rate of the ecosystem service, furthermore, our understanding of time lags and temporal dynamics of non-native species impacts indicates that non-native species that appear harmless today may not be harmless in the future.
We lack the ability to predict which currently benign non-native species will be future invaders, what seems like an advantage now (i.e., new species additions) may undermine the long-term sustainability of the biosphere.
Spatial Units and Biodiversity
A multidisciplinary approach to the dynamics of Biodiversity also assumes that we agree with the objects. To give the possibility of specializing the results and therefore of representing the states and transformations of Biodiversity at different scales, it is particularly necessary to rely on measurements made in plant formations that are significant and cover defined portions of space.
The definition of these spatial units, recognized as relevant for a given study, is an important step in the proposed methodological approach, in fact, Biodiversity can be studied in many ways, with a strictly phytogeographic or edaphological approach.
For example, we would rely on "scientific" categories that distinguish types of vegetation or plant formations and soil classes, from only local practices and representations, we would rely on spatial categories.
Sociocultural aspects
An animal race, a variety of plants, a landscape, a microbial ecosystem correspond to an accumulation of adjustments that testify to the inventive capacity of societies and the extreme malleability of living beings, these vary according to the nature of the productions, which depend on environmental and social conditions, this combination of factors underpins and organizes different levels of biological complexity.
Biodiversity is characterized by all living beings, their genetic heritage, and the ecological complexes in which they evolve. This definition favors the wild, but when it comes to cultivated plants and farm animals, biodiversity could not exist without the practices and knowledge developed by the societies that create, maintain, or reduce it. This constant proximity leads to the increasing use of cultural biodiversity, a very suitable term to qualify and characterize the diversity of living beings and societies.
There is still a prodigious cultural diversity on our planet, even if globalization helps spread the foundations of a single model (food, clothing, music, television, etc.)
Although this model is affected by a serious awareness of its "unsustainability", it is trying to find remedies for the ills that we ourselves have caused, however, it turns out that in cultural diversity it exists, most often pragmatically and natural, a breeding ground for wealth and solutions that can contribute to the immense work in progress.
Threats
What is changing today is the dynamic relationship between extinction and divergence, populations are becoming extinct at a sustained rate due to drastic and rapid environmental changes that ecosystems undergo, they do not have time to adapt to these changes.
Added to this time limitation is that of diversity, in fact, habitats are increasingly fragmented, exchanges between populations are therefore limited, as well as the number of individuals in a territory, compromising variety and diversity. essential mixture for evolution.
When it comes to protecting Biodiversity, you can decide to protect certain species or ecosystems, but these efforts will be useless if the dynamic balance is not preserved, certain environmental policies address this issue in particular.
Biodiversity loss eventually threatens other species that we do not directly impact due to their interconnectedness. As species disappear from an ecosystem, other species are threatened by changes in available resources.
Biodiversity is important for the survival and well - being of human populations because it has an impact on our health and our ability to feed ourselves through agriculture and the gathering of wild animal populations.
75% of the Earth's surface is significantly altered, 66% of the oceans are experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and more than 85% of the surface of wetlands has disappeared. The destruction and fragmentation of natural environments linked, in particular, to increasing urbanization, the development of transport infrastructure, or the overexploitation of resources particularly affect biodiversity.
Human activities aimed at development that can affect Biodiversity
Human activities are causing significant changes in biological communities across the planet and these changes are detrimental to Biodiversity and ecosystem function, ecosystem function is significant in helping plant and animal communities support long-term survival of human localities.
The main threats facing Biodiversity worldwide are:
- Destruction, degradation and fragmentation of habitats.
- Reduced individual survival and reproductive rates through exploitation, pollution, and the introduction of alien species.
However, not all species respond equally to these threats, declines often show strong phylogenetic and ecological patterns, therefore there is an urgent need to model Biodiversity response on threat intensity and ecological attributes of species. the species.
Loss of Biodiversity
It is a reduction in Biodiversity within a species, an ecosystem, a determined territorial zone, or the Earth in its aggregate, Biodiversity is an expression that has to do with the number of genes, species, individual bodies within a fixed species and communities biological activities within a specific geographical area, which ranges from the smallest ecosystem to a global biosphere.
This loss in the variety of life can lead to a collapse in ecosystem functioning where the decline has occurred, has been declining at an alarming rate in recent years, mainly due to human activities such as changes in land use. land, pollution and climate change.
Causes
The main reasons that cause the loss of Biodiversity are the following:
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Changes in land use, for example, deforestation, intensive monoculture, urbanization.
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Direct exploitation such as hunting and overfishing.
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Climate change.
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Pollution.
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Invasive alien species.
- Excessive exploitation.
- Volcanic eruption.
- Invasive species and diseases.
- Recreational hunting and gathering.
habitat destruction
Natural forces can act to destroy habitats, species, and individual organisms; obvious examples of biodiversity loss include volcanic eruptions, floods, and fires. Previous mass extinction events have been associated with asteroid impacts.
The same factors can also lead to habitat fragmentation, fragmentation can isolate populations, reduce gene pools and weaken the 'fitness' or ability of species to survive and reproduce.
natural climate change
Environmental stress applied by heat loss or drought.
Climate Change
Global warming is a cause, as are man-made activities, although to provide a balanced view, species may gain or lose environmental benefits when the climate changes.
Pollution on land, air and water
Water systems suffer from the burden of aquatic nutrients from fertilizers and agricultural by-products; seas and oceans are seeing increasing levels of acidity caused by human-caused polluting activity.
Habitat destruction and degradation
Mining, agriculture, settlements, industries, roads and construction are prime examples, degradation was due to misuse of land and deforestation.
habitat fragmentation
Fragmentation is one of the most dangerous sources of biodiversity attrition, fragmentation leading to artificially established "land islands" with microclimate instruments markedly different from those that were in large habitat footprints prior to fragmentation.
Introduction of invasive species
Any species that is not a natural inhabitant of the locality but is deliberately or accidentally introduced into the system may be designated as an alien species, native species being subject to competition for food and space due to the introduction of alien species.
There are many well-documented extinctions caused by the introduction of alien species, the introduction of the Nile perch into Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, has driven nearly half of the lake's original 400 fish species to extinction .
human overpopulation
Humans can be considered the worst-case alien species for most organisms, human activity and an increasingly "consumption-intensive" lifestyle spelling disaster for the future of Biodiversity, unless conditions change. attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles.
Recreational hunting and gathering
Hides, skins, tusks, meat, skins, chemical content taken for monetary or aesthetic value or simply ego in the case of hunting for no other purpose than the thrill of the kill, in the last decade, more than a third of African elephants have been killed by hunters and poachers to feed the ivory trade.
Consequences
Biodiversity loss has serious ecological effects, since our planet has a natural system and species depend on each other, losing a small number of species can have large effects.
Predator species that lose their prey will also be in danger of extinction now if they cannot replace their prey species with others, moreover, extinct prey that may have consumed plants can no longer do so. Therefore, these plants will overgrow and can overpower other plants and eventually crowd them out.
Due to the loss of Biodiversity, diseases are likely to occur more frequently, since our environmental system is quite sensitive and structured, removing species from the food chain can create serious problems, for example, if a lion kills an antelope, part of it will be eaten, the remaining part will be eaten by other animals.
We can also lose our recreational space as an effect of the loss of Biodiversity, many people are stressed by their work and sometimes they need a space to relax.
How to protect Biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the building block that allows ecosystems to function and humans to thrive, without Biodiversity in an ecosystem we would not have the many plants and animals that we find in our world today, including us. We can protect Biodiversity through the following mechanisms:
government legislation
Governments have the power to control what is done to habitats within their country, legislation that protects natural habitats by prohibiting development, harvesting of natural resources or other human exploitation has a great impact on maintaining Biodiversity natural.
Natural reserves
Nature reserves are a form of government regulation and are often known as National Parks. They protect a region and the organisms that live there from certain forms of development and provide access for people to visit them. This is excellent because it protects the natural habitat and is a place where people can see all the characteristics of an ecosystem.
Captive breeding and seed banks
Captive breeding is when animals are bred in captivity (often in zoos), this is considered somewhat controversial as it requires the capture of animals that are often close to extinction, on the plus side it provides an opportunity to increase the population of the species, so that they can be reintroduced into the wild.
reduce climate change
We need to move away from fossil fuels towards alternative energy sources and natural or sustainable products, reducing the effects of climate change requires a global effort.
Education
As with most environmental issues, education is one of the keys to success; educating people about the importance of biodiversity conservation increases public awareness of the issue.
As public awareness increases, people become more involved and eventually influence their government representatives, pushing for greater protection of the environment.
