What is Biodiversity?

Biodiversity comes from bio, meaning life and diversity, meaning variability. Biodiversity is the variety of all living things, the different plants, animals and microorganisms, the genetic information they contain and the ecosystems they form.

Levels of biodiversity

Biodiversity is usually explored at three levels which work together to create the complexity of life on Earth.

Genetic diversity

Each species is made up of individuals that have their own particular genetic composition. To conserve genetic diversity, different populations of a species must be conserved. Genes are the basic units of all life on Earth. They are responsible for both the similarities and the differences between organisms.

Species diversity

Species diversity is the variety of species within a habitat or a region. In Australia, more than 80 per cent of plant and animal species are endemic, which means that they only occur naturally in Australia. No other country has as many endemic flowering plant families as Australia.

Invertebrates - animals without backbones - make up about 99 per cent of all animal species, and most of these are insects. Insects fill many vital roles in ecosystems as pollinators, recyclers of nutrients, scavengers and food for others. While we may mostly notice mammals, they actually make up less than 1 per cent of all animal species.

Ecosystem diversity

Ecosystem diversity is the variety of ecosystems in a given place. An ecosystem is a community of organisms and their physical environment interacting together. An ecosystem may be as large as the Great Barrier Reef or as small as the back of a spider crab's shell, which provides a home for plants and other animals, such as sponges, algae and worms.

Michael Perry Reserve - an example of Biodiversity.