Читать книгу Fundamentals of Conservation Biology - Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. - Страница 28

A tropical forest ringing with a cacophony of unseen frogs, insects, and birds; a coral reef swirling with schools of myriad iridescent fishes; a vast tawny carpet of grass punctuated by herds of wildebeest and other antelope – these images are well known, and for many people they all revolve around a central issue and a single word: “biodiversity” (Fig. 2.1). Some have argued that “biodiversity” is too vague and trendy a word to be useful, but it does succinctly imply a fundamental idea: life on earth is extraordinarily diverse and complex. This idea is not as well captured in other words such as “nature” or “wild life.” Furthermore, “biodiversity” entered the public vocabulary at a time when the global scope of threats to life on Earth became apparent; thus, to many people, the term carries a conviction to stem the loss of the planet's life‐forms.

Figure 2.1 There are few places where biodiversity is as conspicuous as a coral reef.

(Hans Chehaiber/Flickr/CC BY 1.0)

Definitions of biodiversity usually go one step beyond the obvious – the diversity of life – and define biodiversity as the variety of life in all its forms and at all levels of organization. “In all its forms” reminds us that biodiversity includes plants, invertebrate animals, fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms, as well as the vertebrate animals that garner most of the attention. “All levels of organization” indicates that biodiversity refers to the diversity of genes and ecosystems, as well as species diversity. The idea that biodiversity has levels of organization introduces a complexity that we will explore in the next three chapters, “Species Diversity,” “Ecosystem Diversity,” and “Genetic Diversity,” after a brief overview here. (For a novel approach to understanding biological complexity, see Kim et al. [2019] and their analysis of biochemical networks that reach from individual organisms to the whole biosphere.)