WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY AND ITS IMPORTANCE? HOW THE WORD BIODIVERSITY DERIVED?

All most 10 million kinds of organisms inhabit the earth but less than one third of these have been studied and catalogued by biologists . Diversity  among the earth organisms is more obvious than fundamental unity of life . We see that all organisms share many biological characteristics. Five  principal groups of organisms are prokaryotes , protists , fungi, plants, and animals .  We will focus on the differences among different groups of organisms . How Organisms Classified and named and what are the concerns with the existence of biodiversity.

BIODIVERSITY:

 

         The term “Biodiversity” has been derived from ‘bio’ and ‘diversity’ . DIVERSITY  means variety within  a species and among species . Biodiversity is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystem .

The Diversity of plant and animal in a region depends on climate , altitude , soils and the presence of other species . Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on earth . It is richest in topics . Temperate regions also have many species while there are fewer species in the polar regions .

  Biodiversity found on earth today is the result  of 4 billion year of evolution . The origin of life is not well known to science , though limited evidence suggests that until 600 million year ago , all life consisted of becteria and similar unicellular organisms .

IMPORTANCE OF BIODIVERSITY:

Biodiversity provides food for humans . A significant proportion of drugs and derived  directly or indirectly , from biological sources . A wide range of industrial materials e.g building materials , fibres , gums , resins ,  adhesives , rubber and oil are derived directly from plants .

 Biodiversity plays important role in making and maintaining ecosystems. It play a part in regulating the chemistry of our atmosphere and water  supply . Biodiversity is directly involved in recycling nutrients and providing fertile soils .

CLASSIFICATION – AIMS AND PRINCIPLES:

There is  a large collection of very dissimilar forms of organisms, found on earth . Over 1.5 million types of animals and over 0.5 million types of plant are  known to biologists and these are only a small % of the total types estimated to live on earth. They  range in complexity from small and simple bacteria to large and complex human  beings . Some of them live in sea , some on land ; some walk , other fly and still others are stationary . Each has its own way of life e.g getting food , avoiding unfavourable  environmental conditions, finding a place to live , and reproducing its kind . When there are so many diverse kinds of organisms , it becomes  difficult  to learn about the characteristics of each .

 To study  such a large collection , biologists classify the organisms into groups and subgroups  and for this task they require  some system . Biological classification is a method by which biologists divide organisms into group and subgroups

Aims of Classification :

 The branch of biology which deals with classification is called TAXONOMY . And the branch which deals with classification and also traces the evolutionary history of organisms is known as systematic . The main aims of both these branches are ;

   

1.  To determine similarities and differences among organisms so that they can be studied easily .

2. To find the evolutionary relationships among organisms .