BIODIVERSITY

WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY?

 Hens & Boon (2003) stated that biodiversity is

a contraction of “biological diversity” and refers
to the number, variety and variability of living
organisms.
 It embraces two different concepts: one is a
measure of how many different living things
there are and the other is the measure of how
different they are.
WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY
 Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) defines
biodiversity as the variability among living organisms from all
sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other
aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which
they are part; this includes diversity within species, between
species and of ecosystems”

 It therefore refers to the variety of all life on earth, and

explicitly recognises how the interaction of the different
components of ecosystems results in the provision of
essential ecosystem services on the one hand, and social
and recreational opportunities on the other, including being
a source of inspiration and cultural identity
WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY

 Biodiversity takes into account the diversity of

species (a population or group of populations
whose members have the potential to
interbreed and produce fertile offspring), , their
genes, their populations (group of similar
organisms in the same area), and their
communities (groups of populations).
 There is growing evidence that biodiversity
has a vital role in attaining the Millennium
Development Goals:
It contributes to poverty reduction and to
sustaining human livelihoods and well-
being through, for example, underpinning
food security and human health, providing
clean air and water, and supporting
economic development (UNEP 2007; MA
2005a)
 Biodiversity encompasses several levels of life’s organization:
 Species diversity (Interspecific): Expressed in terms of the number or
variety of species in the world or in a particular region.
 Genetic diversity (Intraspecific): Encompasses the differences in DNA
composition among individuals within a given species.
 This means that it focuses on variation of the set of genes carried by
different organisms
 Ecosystem diversity: Community diversity, habitat diversity, and
landscape diversity are all ways to view biodiversity. E.g. bio-
geographic zones, biomes, eco-regions, and oceanic realms
BENEFITS OF BIODIVERSITY

 Biodiversity provides ecosystem services free of charge.

 Biodiversity helps maintain ecosystem function.
 Biodiversity enhances food security.
 Biodiversity provides traditional medicines and high-tech
pharmaceutical products.
 Biodiversity provides economic benefits through tourism and
recreation.
 People value and seek out connections with nature =
biophilia, “the connections that human beings
subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”
 Question to be answered: Do we have an ethical
responsibility to prevent species extinction?
CONTROLS OF SPP DIVERSITY
HABITAT DIVERSITY
 In some regions spp diversity is positively
correlated with habitat diversity (habitat
heterogeneity)
 This means that habitat diversity correlates
positively with greater resource gradient length
and greater available niche space.
 Habitat diversity is a function of differences in the
physical or biological environment.
 E.g. Areas with complex topography gives rise to a
number habitats and wider variability of habitat
types than areas with flat topography
 Topography influences habitat diversity at both
small and large scales
 At a small scale, a field with gently rolling
topography might include relatively dry hilltop soils,
mesic hillslope soils, and moist soils in low-lying
areas.
 This means that different habitats will host
different organisms that require dry and wet
conditions.
 Such undulating landscapes with different habitats
will have greater spp diversity than a flat surface
characterised by a homogenous habitat (mesic
soils conditions)
 At a large scale, mountainous regions can have a
variety of environments extending from hot and dry
low-elevation deserts, cooler and moister mid
elevation regions that support woodlands and
forests, and cold high-elevation tundra.
 Diverse topography of mountains can often lead to
reproductive isolation of spp populations and
produce increased rates of allopatric speciation.
 Different mountain environments support different
vegetation formations.
 Vegetation structure is therefore an important
biological contributor to habitat diversity.
 Habitat can therefore vary horizontally and
vertically.
 Vertical structure of a forest will produce a
variety of habitats (habitat diversity).
 E.g. A highly stratified forest provides
differences in plant composition and
microclimate in each stratum and presents a
wide range of habitats for birds, mammals,
reptiles, amphibians and insects.
 This means that different plant species that
occupy a particular stratum will provide different
food sources.
LARGE LAND AREAS OF THE TROPICS
 Large continuous land area of the tropical zone in Africa,
S. America & Australia contributes to the development
and maintenance of high species diversity.
 The presence of large areas of continuous habitat in the
equatorial zone, such as the Amazon rainforest, allows
species to have large populations and large geographic
distributions.
 This means that large geographic distributions that
support large population sizes lead to decreased risk of
extinction.

ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY
 Stable environmental climate on a short-time scale (days, months
seasons & years) promotes higher biodiversity than unstable
climates.
 Environs with low amount of daily, seasonal, and annual variability
allow spp to become finely adapted.
 Such spp will develop the most efficient form and behaviour to take
advantage of available resources without requiring special
mechanisms that allow them to cope with a variability in
environment.
 E.g Short-term and long-term variability of the higher latitudes
requires spp to be more generalistic in terms of survival.
 Because they are generalistic, spp therefore tend to survive due to
their adaptability to a wide range of conditions.
DEFINITIONS
 Ecological Niche - Description of the role a
species plays in a biological community, or the
total set of environmental factors that
determines species distribution.
 Generalists - Broad niche
 Specialists - Narrow niche
 Fundamental Niche - Full range of resources or
habitat a species could exploit if there were no
competition with other species.
 Realized Niche - Resources or habitat a species
actually uses
 Deep oceans are stable in terms of temperature
and salinity concentrations.
 However, such environments are characterised
by lower diversity of fish and invertebrates
 On the other hand, shallow-water areas are
environmentally unstable but are characterised
by high biodiversity of fish and invertebrates.
 Saline lakes have lower diversities of aquatic
organisms.
DISTURBANCE
 Disturbance and species diversity can be argued from
the intermediate disturbance hypothesis proposed by
ecologist JH Connell.
 According to the hypothesis, if an ecosystem remains
free of disruption and disturbance, the stable
homogeneous environmental conditions will favour
some spp but will lead to the extinction of other spp for
which the stable habitat is not favourable.
 However, disturbance will produce a heterogeneous
environment that will favour spp that would not survive
in a stable undisturbed environments.
 If however, disturbance occurs too frequently
and it is too severe, it will lead to the extinction
of disturbance-sensitive spp that have long
generation time or occur in low numbers and are
prone to extinction.
COMPETITION
 Natural selection and evolution of spp in the mid-latitudes is
driven by adaptation to physical stresses related to climate,
such as cold or aridity.
 However, evolution in the warm and moist tropics is driven by
interspecific competition.
 The high degree of competition in the lower latitudes leads
to spp developing specialised adaptation methods that
restricts their distribution in terms of habitat and resource
gradients.
 Such spp are therefore competitively superior within narrow
ranges of environmental conditions.
 E.g Narrow habitat preferences decreases direct
competition with other spp.
JUST A REMINDER
 Interspecific - Competition between members
of different species.
 Intraspecific - Competition among members of
the same species.
 Often intense due to same space and nutritional
requirements
PREDATION
 High numbers of predator and parasite spp, particularly in
the tropics, maintain high biodiversity by keeping prey
populations low and decreasing the competitive exclusion of
one prey spp by another.
 The reduction in competition allows for more prey spp to
evolve.
 This leads to the coevolution of additional specialist and
generalist predators.
 According DH Janzen hypothesis, tropical forests contain
high numbers of different tree species which occur as
isolated individuals.
 No tree spp appears to be capable of effectively excluding
others at a landscape scale.
 The restricted distribution of tropical trees is
due to concentration of seed predators that
limit the distribution of seeds.
 Very high concentrations of specific seed
predators are common in the vicinity of their
host trees.
 Most seeds that are found near the parent tree
are devoured and this keeps the area close to
the parent tree free of its own offspring
 However, seeds that are transported away from
the parent tree are not devoured and have
greater chance of survival.
 The inability of trees to establish close to other
members of the same spp keeps the
populations of tree spp small and dispersed.
PRODUCTIVITY
 Regions with high primary productivity will have high
biodiversity.
 This is because the vegetation in such areas produces
more energy that can support more spp at the higher
trophic levels.
 The availability of abundant energy allows primary
consumer spp to have specialised niches in terms of
food.
 This means that, the greater the number of primary
consumers, the greater the number of predators that
can be supported by the environment.
 The large number of different herbivores
promotes greater diversity of plants through the
coevolution of specialised herbivores,
pollinators and seed dispersers.
CAUSES OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS
BIOLOGICAL CAUSES

 Habitat loss:
 Habitat loss due to human intervention has
accelerated biodiversity loss
 Habitat loss is due to habitat fragmentation
through the construction of roads, dams
settlements, canals etc.
 E.g. Africa by 2005 had approximately 48,9% of
undisturbed environment compared to
Europe’s 15,6%.
 Introduction of exotic species:
Some species have been intentionally and
unintentionally introduced in many parts of the
world.
 E.g. Foxes, rabbits and cats, which were taken
to Australia aboard European ships, have
decimated Australia’s indigenous wildlife.
 In freshwater, the stocking of exotic fish for
sport, or (rarely) for food, has caused
approximately 18 extinctions of fish species in
North American rivers.
 Catastrophic changes in the fish biodiversity of
Lake Victoria (East Africa) resulted from the
introduction of Nile perch
 Eucalyptus, which is indigenous in Australia,
has been introduced in many tropical and
subtropical regions in the world, where the tree
merely behaves as a pest.
 Over-harvesting
 Over-harvesting through poaching causes
biodiversity loss
 Over-harvesting due to systematic cutting of wood
for heating purposes or charcoal production also
lead to biodiversity loss.
 The use of medicinal plants might also contribute
to biodiversity loss.
 E.g Common medicinal plants of South Africa
include Bitter aloe (Aloe ferox), African ginger
(Siphonochilus aethiopicus), Wild rosemary
(Eriocephalus africanus), Pepperbark tree
(Warburgia salutaris), Pineapple flower (Eucomis
autumnalis), etc.
 Co-evolution problems
 Species that are co-evolved with another, such as plants
with specialised insect pollinators, will go extinct if one of
the pair goes extinct.
 E.g. Moabi (Baillonella toxisperma) used to be a common
tree in West-Africa.
 The fruits are eaten, cooking oil is extracted from the
seeds (karite) and the bark is used for medicinal
purposes.
 However, the plant depends on the elephants for
reproduction.
 Elephants swallow and disperse the seeds.
 However, the reduction of elephants in countries such as
the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Benin has had an important
impact on the distribution of the tree.
 Homogenisation in agriculture and forestry
 The use of limited number of species in
industrial agriculture and forestry also lead to
biological diversity reduction.
MODERN BIOGEOGRAPHIC REGIONS
 (1) Nearctic and Palearctic (The Holarctic),
 (2) Neotropical,

 (3) Ethiopian (African),

 (4) Oriental and the

 (5) Australian
COMMON BIOGEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTIONAL
PATTERNS
 The distributions of organisms provide important
evidence regarding the ecology and evolutionary
history of organisms.
 Endemic and cosmopolitan distributions

 Plants and animals that possess very large

geographic ranges distributed over most
continents are cosmopolitan.
 Taxa with restricted geographic ranges are
classified as endemics.
 Endemics are species that are found in one
biogeographic region.
 Species that occur in three or four regions are
classified as semicosmopolitan
 Species that have a large range (>4, 400, 000
km2 range) within a biogeographic region in
which they are found are classified as macro-
areal.
 Those with small ranges are classified as micro-
areal (<1000 km2 range).
 Meso-areal species have intermediate range
sizes. (Read more from your notes)
CONTINUOUS ZONAL BIOGEOGRAPHIC
DISTRIBUTIONS
 Many semicosmopolitan and cosmopolitan plant and
animal taxa have geographic distributions that form
broad latitudinal bands that follow large latitudinal
temperature belts, and are restricted to these bands.
 Circumpolar taxa have distributions that circle the Arctic
or Antarctic regions and lie within the colder climates of
the high latitudes.
 The terms Boreal (N. hemisphere) and Austral
(S.Hemisphere) are used to describe plants that are
distributed in the cooler areas of the mid- to high
latitudes.
 Temperate plants and animals are found in the
intermediate zone typical of the middle latitudes.
 Pantropical organisms are found in the tropical
zone. (Read more from your notes)
 Amphiregional disjunct distribution
 Disjunct distribution refers to geographic ranges
that are divided into two or more geographically
separate parts.
 Amphiregional distributions occur when macro-
and meso-areal taxa have two widely separated
geographic ranges.
 These species are usually separated by
biogeographic barriers.
 Amphitropical taxa occur on either side of the
tropics but not in the tropical zones.
 Amphioceanic taxa occur on opposite sides of
oceans.
 E.g. Amphiatlantic and amphipacific taxa occur
along the western and eastern coastal areas of
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, respectively.
 Terrestrial and marine species that are found in
polar regions, but not in the warmer mid- and
low latitudes are called bipolar organisms.
(Read more from your notes)
 Dispersal junctions
 Dispersal junctions take place when a jump
dispersal event allows a population of a plant or
animal species to become established a long
distance from the main population
 (Read more from your notes)
 Climatic disjunctions
 Climatic disjunctions occurs when climatic change
makes a portion of a taxon’s range uninhabitable
and splits a once continuous geographic
distribution into two or more separate parts. (Read
more from your notes)
 Geological disjunctions
 Geological disjunctions occur when geologic
processes such as plate tectonic movement split
once continuous ranges into two or more
separate parts. (Read more from your notes)

 Evolutionary disjunctions
 Evolutionary disjunctions occur when two new
species develop in different portions of the
geographic range of a widespread common
ancestor. (Read more from your notes)