Biodiversity Vocabulary Review

Biodiversity Concepts

• The term for the variety of life across all levels of ecological organization is biodiversity.
• The number and variety of ecosystems within a given area is referred to as ecosystem diversity.

Population and Species Interactions

• Poaching refers to the illegal capture or killing of an organism.
• Local extinction, or extirpation, occurs when a species disappears from a given area but not globally.

Habitat and Fragmentation

• Habitat fragmentation is the division of a habitat into smaller patches.

Key Components of Biodiversity

• Genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity are all components of overall biodiversity.
• Population diversity is NOT a part of overall biodiversity.

Speciation and Adaptation

• The tiger, jaguar, and lion all belong to the same genus (Panthera).
• Genetic variation provides the raw material for adaptation to local conditions.
• Speciation, or the formation of new species, increases species diversity.

Population Dynamics

• The disappearance of a particular population from a given area, but not of the entire species globally, is called local extinction or extirpation.