3.1 Biodiversity and Evolution

Biodiversity

The variety of life on Earth; includes genetic, species, and habitat diversity.

Resilience

A system’s ability to recover when disturbed - the ability to avoid tipping points and maintain stability.

Evolution

The cumulative change in the heritable characteristics of a population or species.

Natural selection

A process by which individuals with genetic mutations that confer enhanced sexual selection and/or enhanced survival in a changing environment have a greater chance to reproduce and pass on the beneficial genes to offspring.

competition

Where organisms compete for a resource that is in limited supply (for example, food, water, light, space, mates, nesting sites, etc.); it may be intraspecific or interspecific.

Variaition

the differences or changes that exist within a group, set, or system.

Speciation

The formation of new species when populations of a species become isolated geographically or behaviourally, and evolve differently from other populations.

Species diversity

The variety of species per unit area. This includes both the number of species present (richness) and their relative abundance (evenness).

Richness

The number of distinct species present in an ecosystem.

evenness

How evenly the individuals within each species are distributed within an ecosystem, that is, how similar the population sizes of each species are.

Simpson's Reciprocal Index (D)

A measure of biodiversity that takes into account the richness and evenness within an ecosystem. 

Citizen Science

A situation in which non-scientists collaborate with professional researchers to collect data on the environment.