Understanding Biodiversity and its Benefits

• Biodiversity encompasses all organisms and the variety of life in a habitat or ecosystem.
• Biodiversity includes diversity in species, genes, and lands within ecosystems

Importance of Genetic Diversity

• Genetic diversity equips species to handle environmental pressure.
• Different species each serve a unique role in their ecosystems.

Benefits of Biodiversity

• Biodiversity provides ecosystem services
• Biodiversity has medicinal benefits
• Biodiversity promotes resilience
• Biodiversity has economic value
• Biodiversity influences culture and aesthetics

Resilience and Diversity

• Resilience is how quickly one adapts to change, difficulties, or tough situations.
• Biodiversity promotes overcoming challenges and evolution.

Defining a Species

• A species is a group of organisms sharing traits, freely breeding, and producing viable offspring.

Challenges in Determining Species

• Assessing an organism's species can be challenging due to subpopulations
• Assessing an organism's species can be challenging due to genetic isolations.
• Addressing these challenges is crucial before human interference to prevent extinction or endangerment.

Definitions of Population, Community, and Evolution

• Population: Individuals of a species living in the same area
• Community: Assemblage of different populations living together in a defined area
• Evolution: Genetic change in populations of organisms across generations

Natural Selection

• Natural selection favors traits that enhance survival and reproduction.

Distribution of Biodiversity

• Latitudinal gradient involves increased species richness towards the Equator.
• This results in equatorial regions with higher plant productivity, stable climates, and no glaciation.
• Biodiversity hotspots support higher numbers of species, especially endemic ones
• Endemic species are found nowhere else in the world
• These come about via unique climate, geographic isolation, and high in situ speciation rates.
• Ecotones are areas where habitats intermix, featuring higher density.
• Extinction occurs when the last member of a species dies in the wild.
• Extinction in the wild means a species exists only in human care (zoos/reserves).
• Functionally extinct describes a species lacking enough members to reproduce.
• Extirpation is when the last member of a species dies, leading to local extinction.

Threats to Biodiversity (HIPPO)

• Habitat destruction
• Invasive species
• Pollution
• Population
• Overharvesting
• Climate change

Ethics

• Ethics studies good/bad and right/wrong and establishes moral principles for behavior.
• Universalist view defines good and bad in absolute terms.
• Relativist view considers social and cultural context.

Utility in Ethics

• Utility in ethics focuses on actions that produce the most good for the most people.

Views on Environmental Ethics

• Ecocentrism: Whole ecological systems have value
• Biocentrism: All creatures have equal rights and values, not prioritizing humans.
• Anthropocentrism: A human-centered view of our relationship with the environment

Conservation

• Conservation biology studies factors contributing to biodiversity loss/restoration.
• Conservation geneticists study genetic attributes to infer population status.
• Minimum viable population is the smallest population size before problems arise.

Approaches

• Ecosystem approach seeks to balance species populations in their native habitats
• This is achieved via legally protected wilderness areas and wildlife reserves.
• It is also achieved via eliminating non-native species
• Wildlife management approach utilizes the greatest good for the greatest number of people
• Involves managing game species for sustained yield
• Involves using laws to regulate hunting
• Involves establishing harvest quotas
• Species approach focuses on protecting endangered species
• Involves identifying endangered species
• Involves giving endangered species legal protection
• Involves preserving and managing crucial habitats
• Involves propagating endangered species in captivity
• Involves reintroducing endangered species to suitable habitats

Species Definitions

• Umbrella species are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
• This leads to preserving their habitat and other organisms in the community.
• Flagship species are large and charismatic, used for biodiversity conservation.
• Keystone species influence the survival of many other species in an ecosystem.

Endangered Species Act

• The Endangered Species Act forbids government or citizens from actions endangering a species or its habitat.
• The Endangered Species Act's objectives are:
• Preventing extinction
• Stabilizing declining populations
• Enabling populations to recover
• Some people oppose the Endangered Species Act because they believe it values species more than people (anthropocentric view).

CITES

• CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) protects species by regulating international trade.
• It consists of agreements to ensure international trade in wild animals/plants does not threaten their survival.

Convention on Biological Diversity

• The Convention on Biological Diversity is an international treaty from the 1992 Rio Summit.
• The Convention on Biological Diversity's goals are:
• Conservation of biological diversity
• Sustainable use of its components
• Equitable sharing of benefits from using genetic resources

Seed Banks Importance

• Seed banks act as depositories of seeds
• Seed banks preserve seed integrity and genome in case they become scarce.
• Seed banks' importance:
• Protection from disease
• Keeping safe genetic diversity
• Giving seeds the ability to thrive in different climate conditions

Explore biodiversity's importance, encompassing species, genes, and landscapes. Learn about genetic diversity's role in resilience, ecosystem services, medicinal benefits, and economic value. Understand challenges in defining species and the impact on resilience and evolution.