What is Biological Diversity

• Bio diversity refers to the variety of life forms in an area.– Expressed as # of species in an area – Or # of genetic types in an area

Biodiversity

• The variety of the earth’s species, the genes they contain, the ecosystems in which they live and the ecosystem processes.

• Biodiversity is a vital natural resource

Basic Concepts of Biological Diversity

• Genetic diversity: – total # of genetic characteristics of a specific species,

sub species or group of species.

• Habitat diversity: – the different kinds of habitat in a given unit area.

• Species diversity:– Species richness- total # of sp– Species evenness- the relative abundance of sp– Species dominance- the most abundant sp

10 species; 100 ind, 87 elephants, 9 sp w/ 2 ind each

10 species; 100 ind, 10 ind each species

Species Diversity

Merely counting the number of species is not enough to describe biological diversity.

Diversity Index

• A diversity index is a mathematical measure of species diversity in a community.

• Important to select area, understand what you are counting and be familiar with the organisms in order to do a DI

• What is the Diversity Index of that forest?

Taiga Plants

Balsam Fir Black Spruce Douglas-fir

Paper Birch Eastern Red Cedar Jack Pine

Siberian White Fir White Poplar

Spruce

White Spruce

Taiga Animals

American Black Bear Bald Eagle Bobcat

Canadian Lynx Gray Wolf Grizzly Bear

Long-Eared Owl Red Fox River Otter

Snowshoe Rabbit Wolverine

Diversity Lab

• DIRECTIONS:• In this activity your "ecosystem" will be the school

parking lot, and the "species" will be the different car models and colors. As a class, we will be comparing the species diversity of the student and staff parking lots.

• Count the number of different makes of cars (i.e. – Chevy, Honda, etc) in the student parking lot.

• (Consider models and colors to be “genetic diversity”) • Count the number of different makes of cars (i.e. –

Chevy, Honda, etc) in the staff parking lot.• Calculate the diversity index using the equation below.• Average the “D” of all the species to find the overall

diversity of the parking lots.