28th Ambassadorship, Month 3, Report 2

Month: May

Thematic report

Topic: Biodiversity

Biodiversity is a property of a place and specifically refers to the variation within and among living species, assemblages of living organisms, biotic communities, and biotic processes, whether naturally occurring or altered by people. Genetic diversity, species identification and number, species assemblages, biotic communities, and biotic processes, as well as each's quantity (such as abundance, biomass, cover, rate, and structure), can all be used to measure biodiversity. Any geographical scale, from individual microsites and habitat patches to the entire biosphere, can be used to observe and quantify it.

Climate change, ocean acidification, and other anthropogenic environmental effects have made it impossible to sustainably exploit Earth's biological diversity as a result of human population increase and rising per capita consumption. We contend that the existence of humans and the preservation of ecosystem processes depend on the effective conservation of biodiversity.

The level of Biodiversity are:

i) Genetic Diversity

Heritable variation within and between populations of organisms is a prerequisite for genetic diversity. Gene and chromosome mutations provide new genetic variation in individuals, and recombination allows it to spread throughout populations in sexually reproducing organisms. The number of conceivable combinations of various variants of each gene sequence in humans and fruit flies is thought to exceed the total number of atoms in the cosmos. At all levels of organization, further types of genetic variation can be found, including the quantity of DNA in each cell and the structure and number of chromosomes.

ii) Species Diversity

Since species have historically served as the basic descriptive units of the living universe, biodiversity is frequently and incorrectly used as a synonym for species diversity, specifically for “species richness,” which refers to the total number of species in a location or environment. Usually, discussion of global biodiversity is expressed in terms of the number of species worldwide in various taxonomic categories.

iii) Ecosystem Diversity

Although the concept of genetic and species variety may be defined, it is challenging to quantify diversity at the level of an ecosystem, habitat, or community. Ecosystems do not have a universal definition or classification at the global level, and it is challenging in reality to evaluate ecosystem diversity other than locally or regionally, and even then, mostly in terms of vegetation. Given that they expressly incorporate abiotic components and are in part influenced by soil/parent material and climate, ecosystems are further segregated from genes and species.

 

Conservation of Biodiversity

i) Insitu Conservation

Only by preserving creatures in their natural habitats and within their current ranges does it appear possible to preserve a sizable amount of the world's biological diversity. This permits ongoing natural evolutionary adaptability of wild populations and, in theory, the continuation of present use methods. It almost always requires improved management through the integrated, community-based protection of protected areas for such upkeep to be successful.

 

ii) Ex-situ Conservation

Numerous creatures can be kept alive in captivity or in cultivation in viable populations. Similar methods are being developed for animals (preservation of embryos, eggs, and sperm, i.e., "frozen zoos") but are more challenging. Plants can also be kept in seed banks and germplasm collections; however, these methods are more troublesome. While it would theoretically be possible to conserve a relatively large number of higher plants ex situ, this would be practical for only a small portion of the world's creatures. Ex situ conservation is exceedingly expensive in the case of most animals. Additionally, it frequently results in a loss of genetic diversity due to founder effects and a high likelihood of inbreeding.

 

ADDIN Mendeley Bibliography CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Swingland, I. R. (2013). Biodiversity, Definition of. Encyclopedia of Biodiversity: Second Edition, November, 399–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-384719-5.00009-5

https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1189138