Conservation of biodiversity

What are the 3 strands of biodiversity

• Ecosystem diversity: Variety of ecosystems found in an area or on earth

• Species diversity: Number of relative abundance of species found within an ecosystem

• Genetic diversity: Variety of genes and alleles present in a species. Species with high genetic biodiversity are more likely to survive change to environment through process of natural selection

What are the two ways of classifying organisms into groups

Lumpers: Focusses on similarities between groups of organisms

Splitters: Focusses on differences between groups of organisms

What is anthropogenic species extinction and what are the causes

Loss of species due to human activities. Human activity causes:

• Habitat destruction

• Climate change

• Pollution

• Overexploitation (hunting etc)

• invasive species introduction

• Disease

Evidence for biodiversity crisis

IPBES (intergovernmental body which provides policy makers with assessments of data collected on biodiversity) concluded that human actions threatens more species with global extinction than ever before. Surveys are done repeatedly to determine if there is a change in biodiversity.

Define richness and evenness of biodiversity

Richness: Number of different species

Evenness: How close the population number are to each other

Biodiverse ecosystems should have wide variety of different species, all with relatively large populations

Simpson’s diversity index

D = Diversity index

N = Total number of organisms

n = Number of organisms in a particular species

High index value suggest stable site with many different niches

Low index value suggests few potential niches where only a few species dominate

What is citizen scientist

Professional scientists studying biodiversity require as much data as possible

Collect and share data with professional scientists

Benefits of citizen science

• Increase quantity of data collected

• Cost effective, as citizen scientists are volunteers

• Increase public engagement in conservation

Challenges of citizen science

• Data quality: Data collected by volunteers may be of varying quality. Quality control measures need to be used

• Bias of volunteers: Volunteers may have personal biases on where they collect data

Define Urbanisation

Movement of people to cities and towns. 

Negatives of urbanisation

• Deforestation: demand for more wood and agricultural land

• Agriculture: Displace natural ecosystems, farm waste, fertiliser, pesticied enters natural eco

Define Ex situ conservation

Conservation of species outside of their natural habitat

• Zoos

• Botanic gardens

• Storage of germ plasm in seen or tissue banks

Advantages of ex situ conservation (3)

• Protection from predators

• Greater control of conditions required for breeding, ensure that offspring survive after birth

• Technologies eg ivf can increase number of offspring produced

Disadvantages of ex situ conservation

• captive populations have limited genetic diversity

• organism are living outside their natural habitats, may not have the required survival strategies when reintroduced to their natural habitats

• Does not prevent the destruction of the natural habitat

Define in situ conservation

Protect species within their natural habitat

• Restoration of ecosystems

• Removal of invasive species

• Reintroduce locally extinct species

• Legal protection against pollution and development

• Controlling access to the ecosystem

• Controlling poaching

What is rewilding

Aims to restore degraded ecosystems back to their natural state.

Advantage of in situ conservation

• Organism are not held in captivity, so they develop survival strategies

• Other species in protected habitat are also protected

• Biodiversity in ecosystem is preserved

Disadvantages of in situ conservation

• Many endangered species need large areas for population survival

• Difficult to prevent poaching of endangered animals

• Genetic variety may already be damaged

What is edge program

evolutionarily distinct, and globally endangered program highlights and protects the most unique endangered species

Evolutionarily distinct: Species that are unique in the way that they look and behave. Species should have few or no close relatives

Globally endangered: IUCN red list endangered species.