The Bhawanipur
Education Society
Name- Saadhvi Agarwala
Roll no College
Understanding
Biodiversity
• The number and variety of plants,
animals and other organisms that exist
in an economy is known as
biodiversity.
• It is a major of the variety of organisms
present in different ecosystems.
• The richness of biodiversity depends
on the climatic conditions and area of
the region.
• Biodiversity is the result of 3.5 billion
years of evolution
Levels of Biodiversity
Genetic
Diversity:-
• Genetic diversity is the amount of
variation in genetic material DNA
within a species or within a population.
Genetic diversity has the following
importance:
• It helps in speciation or evolution of
new species.
• It is useful to adaptation to changes in
environmental conditions
• It is important for agricultural
Species Diversity
• It describes the variety in the number and
abundance of the species within a region.
• To accurately determine species diversity
both the species richness and the relative
abundance within its pieces must be
considered.
• The species richness depends largely on
climatic conditions.
• When a species is confined entirely to a
particular area it is termed as endemic
species.
Ecosystem
Diversity
• The enormous variation among
ecosystems is called ecosystem diversity.
• Each ecosystem has specific
characteristics. For example, a forest
Ecosystem consists of predominantly
trees while grassland ecosystem has
mainly grasses and shrubs.
• The diversity of an ecosystem decreases
on over utilisation and misuse. This
gradually disturbed ecological balance.
Biogeographic Classification of
India
• Biodiversity is not evenly distributed,
rather it varies greatly across the globe
as well as within regions.
• Diversity consistently measures higher
in the tropics and lower in the polar
regions generally.
• Among other factors, the diversity of
all leaving things depends on
temperature, precipitation,altitude
soils, geography and the presence of
other species.
• Rainforest that have had wait climate
for a long time have particularly high
biodiversity.
Value of Biodiversity
• Biodiversity has enormous value for us.
• We not only obtain benefits from different
plants and animals in various ways but we
are also dependent on it for our cultural,
economic and environmental well-being.
We can categorize value of biodiversity in
two types.
• Direct Value
• Indirect Value
These can be further categorised as
represented in the flowchart aside.
Direct value of biodiversity is of two types- consumptive use and productive use.
• CONSUMPTIVE USE- The consumptive use
value is estimated through people’s
consumption of natural resources. For
example- fuel, foods, drugs and medicine.
• PRODUCTIVE USE- Biodiversity can be
useful to yield products that a commercially
sold in a market. For example Timber and
construction materials. Eatables such as fish,
mushrooms, fruits etc. Animal products like
elephant tusks, silk, wool, lac etc
Biodiversity is enormously valuable to us in various indirect ways. They
are:
• Social Values- Apart from the consumption and
productive use, biodiversity is used by societies.
The social value of biodiversity
includes aesthetic, recreational, cultural
and spiritual values. To this can be
added health benefits resulting from
recreational and other activities.
Biodiversity Hotspots
• A biodiversity hotspot is a region with the
high level of endemic species that has
experienced great habitat loss.
• While hotspots are red all over the world the
majority are forest areas and most allocated
in the tropics.
• 34 biodiversity hotspots have been identified.
They once covered 15.7% of the earth’s land
surface.
• 86% of the hotspot habitat has already been
destroyed
Global Biodiversity
• Biodiversity is not uniform throughout the
world but varies with latitude and altitude.
• Most of the world’s biores nations are
developing Nation situated in the south.
• The northern Nations have low level of
biodiversity.
• Species diversity decreases from equator
towards pole.
• The number of species of vascular plants in
tropics is about 10 times more than that of
temperate forest.
Biodiversity at National level
• 350 different mammals- 8th highest in the world.
• 1200 species of Birds- 8th highest in the world.
• 453 species of reptiles- 5th highest in the world.
• 45000 plants pieces- 15th highest in the world.
• 1022 species of ferns.
• 50000 known species of insects
Threats to Biodiversity
