Basic Concept of Biodiversity

We have immense range of forests, wetlands, grasslands, deserts, fresh water bodies, marine areas, coral reefs, hills and mountains in our world. All these areas are inhabited by vast varieties of organisms like plants, animals and microorganisms.

An association of all the plants at a particular place is called as Plant Community and the association of all the animals at the same place is called as Animal Community.

Both the plant and animal communities inhabit a particular place living completely merged and interacting among them.

Members of a community not only interact with the members of other communities, they interact with the members of their own community and with the physical environment around them, as well.

The physical environment surrounding a community is called as its habitat.

Thus, a habitat is the place or area where communities live.

The association of all the communities of plants, animals and microorganisms at a particular place is called as biota or the Biotic Community. In a biotic community we may observe some species of plants and animals or microorganisms in abundance or in scarcity.

Vast variability exists in the distribution or occurrence of different life forms in different habitats. The variability of life forms in a particular habitat is considered as the biodiversity of that habitat.

The biodiversity of an area is important for running the processes of nature in that area. If biodiversity of an area is depleted or disturbed due to some or the other reason, the processes of nature may not run properly in that area. It will lead to a condition which is called as Natural Imbalance.

This natural imbalance causes further damages to nature and its biodiversity. So the balance of nature must be maintained at all costs.

Since humans and also all the other organisms of the natural environment derive their livelihood and all the other things from the nature, it may be a suicidal tendency if someone disturbs this balance and causes any damage to the biodiversity.

Definitions of Biodiversity

Biodiversity is a composite word made from two words- Biological and Diversity. This word was used for the first time by the Science of Conservation in the year 1975 as Natural Diversity.

The word biodiversity is supposed to have been coined by W. G. Rosen in 1985 while he was planning for the National Forum on Biological Diversity held in 1986.

The word biodiversity appeared first in a publication in 1988 when entomologist C. O. Wilson used it as a title of the proceedings of that forum.

According to a report of the United Nations Environmental Programme -2002(UNEP-200), biodiversity refers to the variability among living organisms from all sources including terrestrial, marine and other ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are parts. This includes diversity within species, between species and, within and between ecosystems.

The same opinions regarding biodiversity were also expressed in the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992 which was organized in Rio de Janeiro.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India reported in 1998 that biodiversity is the species richness of plants, animals and microorganisms, including their genetic makeup and the communities they form.

According to another opinion, –the varieties of life forms, their variations and abundance alonwith the variation of the components of their habitat is called as biodiversity or the biological diversity.

Further, some ecologists say that Biodiversity is the sum of all the different species of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms living in the environment and the variety of habitats where they live.

In a nut shell, the range of organisms, present in a given ecological community or system is called as biodiversity.

The ecologists of the world also accept another definition of biodiversity according to which-

“The totality of genes, species, and ecosystems of a region is called as biodiversity.”

 This definition presents a unified view of the traditionally accepted three levels of the identification of biodiversity, – the genetic diversity, the species diversity, and the ecosystem diversity.