Immense. Many of the species in all groups are still not known, particularly those of the lower groups.
Biodiversity, the earth's biological wealth is the entire complement of life that has survived nearly 4 billion years of evolution. The North America (Neo-tropical regions), South America, Africa and Asia have fabulous wealth of flora and fauna. Exactly how many species of life exist on earth is not known to anybody. Estimate range from 3 million to 100 million. There are 1,435,662 identified species all over the world. However, a large number of species are still unidentified. The identified species include 751,000 species of insects, 250,000 of flowering plants, 281,000 of animals, 68,000 of fungi, 30,000 of Protists (unicellular and colonial eucaryotes) 26,900 of algae, 4,800 of bacteria and other similar forms and 1,000 of viruses.
Kindly see the PDF attachment.
Dear Arvind,
You attach your paper with your posting. It would be good.
Biodiversity is most commonly used to replace the more clearly defined and long established terms, species diversity and species richness.
Biodiversity can be defined genetically as the diversity of alleles, genes and organisms. They study processes such as mutation and gene transfer that drive evolution.
This link may give some information
https://www.greenfacts.org/en/biodiversity/l-3/1-define-biodiversity.htm
Biodiversity is the variety of all living things; the different plants, animals and micro organisms, the genetic information they contain and the ecosystems they form. Biodiversity is usually explored at three levels - genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity. These three levels work together to create the complexity of life on Earth.
Please is Water Hyacinth or Sea weed in any way a threat to biodiversity?
I think in any ecological system if their is no any athropological interference, no any threats to biodiversity whatever it Water Hyacinth or Sea weed .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes
See the above link. Water Hyacinth is an invasive species.
@ Modestus Okwu
Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is one of the world’s most invasive aquatic plants posing threat to biodiversity.
Please have a look at this useful PDF attachment.
@ Dr. Subir Bandyopadhyay Sir,
As per your suggestion I have attached the source material with answer.
Thank you very much Dr. Arvind Singh for the pdf materials. I appreciate ...
See "The diversity of biodiversity" on :
https://www.nature.com/articles/445717a
Thank you very much Oum Kalthoum Ben Hassine. The information you shared is very useful.
Regards,
MO.
The link below is very useful.
Article Christie, M., Hanley, N., Warren J., Murphy, K., Wright, R.,...
Risk threats to biodiversity and health
There is growing concern about the health consequences of biodiversity loss and change. Changes in biodiversity affect the functioning of ecosystems and large ecosystem disturbances can result in viable goods and services for survival. The loss of biodiversity also means that we lose many of the chemicals and genes in nature before we discover them, the kind that has already achieved huge human health benefits.
Sorry Dr. Djaafar Zemali, I do not understand you !!! In addition to the fact that you do not answer the question posed by Dr. Modestus Okwu "How diverse is biodiversity?", You write "wide ecosystem disturbances can result in viable goods and services for survival." How is it possible?!!.
Thank you so much Prof. Oum Kalthoum Ben Hassine for your sagacity and professionalism. Thanlk you for your comment Dr. Djaafar Zemali, please can you explain further?
Thank you a lot Dr Modestus Okwu for your relevant comment adressed to Dr Djaafar Zemali. Especially since he has , moreover, written "The loss of biodiversity also means that we lose many of the chemicals". However, the term "chemicals" rather resends to pollution.
You are most welcome Prof. Oum Kalthoum Ben Hassine.
I am still waiting to read from Dr. Djaafar Zemali.
“A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.”
― E. O. Wilson
As a complement of Dr. Arvind answer , Insects are the most diverse class of arthropods. Between 950,000–1,000,000 of all described species are insects, so over 50% of all described eukaryotes (1.8 million) are insects. With only 950,000 known non-insects, if the actual number of insects is 5.5 million, they may represent over 80% of the total, and with only about 20,000 new species of all organisms being described each year, most insect species likely will remain undescribed.
Wealth is a simple inventory of species, but biological diversity is much more than that. Its total interpretation is made through its three fundamental pillars: alpha, beta and gamma. Wealth is simply an inventory of taxa in a territory, a value that from the quantitative point of view (does not need the identification of each taxon) is the simplest way to measure alpha biological diversity (something like space in the mechanics of Newton). By its conception, alpha diversity is closer to population studies than to the identification and simple counting of species. That alpha diversity could be considered as the final step of the American school in community studies, as the French created a taxonomic system of the communities, or the Russian included the concept of "cenon". Many times we talk about the great diversity of biological diversity, but it always refers to wealth. To my way of seeing that vision has created confusions. The final result of the works of biological diversity does not show quantitative magnitudes, but in essence it is a photograph of the degree of complexity that exists in the relationships of living beings and the environment, including other living beings in that environment. Halffter assures that at the current level of knowledge it is impossible to know the total biological diversity of an ecosystem no matter how small that ecosystem is, that is why we speak of indicator taxonomic groups that must meet certain conditions. Human society, which is an emergent property of life itself, has made such relationships so complex that it is about to break the fragile balance of living beings and the planet. That would undoubtedly lead to mass extinctions that could cause a significant decrease in wealth, and with it the extinction of the human being itself. But in the most extreme situation, unless the planet itself is destroyed, species would always survive (the cockroach resists large doses of radioactivity). Therefore, and hence the importance of knowing biological diversity, is that we have become the only species that has created all the conditions for its own extinction. As a politician began his speech in 1992, during the summit of the earth: "An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive liquidation of its natural conditions of life: man."
Biodiversity is vast, plants and animals, which are yet identified , but the remaining are still under search.
I appreciate all insightful contributions shared so far. Thank you all.
Because of their biological diversity, organisms play an important role in the development of agriculture, medicine and industry
Aesthetic and ethical value: bio-diversity and the different types of organisms on human aesthetic value of stunning, as man must being only able to invest around him keep it, and because man is capable of destroying and sabotaging all environmental regulations will be is responsible for the protection of various environmental regulations
Sorry Dr. Djaafar Zemali
Not only you do not answer my questions about what you wrote before, but you continue to not answer the asked question by providing, each time, a text that, in my opinion, suffers from a serious problem of translation from French to English, which makes it incomprehensible.
The purpose of answering a question is, first and foremost, to provide valuable and understandable informations that can enrich the discussion and not a way, no matter the cost, to increase our RG score, even though we write nonsense!
Best regards
Hello, for example till know we have isolated and studied only 3% of microorganisms from total biodiversity.
Dear Dr. Karen A. Darbinyan, I am glad to know that only 3% of microorganisms from total biodiversity have been studied so far. What is the source of this information please? Please be kind to send me detailed information. Tnks
Dear Modestus Okwu,
In my opinion, the biodiversity of biological organisms and ecosystems in nature is so great that we will never fully know it. We will not know biodiversity to the full extent, not because cognitive processes are limited.
Technological progress causes that human cognitive processes increase their dimension. More and more perfect research devices are being created, more and more perfect satellites analyzing whole ecosystems, more and more perfect electron microscopes and others thanks to which we learn the cellular and molecular structure of living organisms. The knowledge gathered in the Big Data database systems is more and more efficiently researched.
Thanks to the progress of information technology, increasingly large data sets can be analyzed. In various research centers, the newly discovered species of flora and fauna are studied at universities.
However, despite all these activities and continual technological progress, man may not be able to fully understand the biodiversity of biological organisms and ecosystems in nature, because every day many species of flora and fauna disappear from Earth irretrievably. Among these species of flora and fauna, which are dying out due to the shrinking areas of their natural habitats, their natural habitats in which they have lived for thousands of millions of years are many such, which, unfortunately, man did not know, explore and describe fully.
Dear Friends and Colleagues of RG
The above discussion inspired me to the following considerations:
That is why it is important to develop banks of seeds and genes containing genotypes of dying flora and fauna species with the hope of their future population reproduction.
Do you agree with my opinion?
Please reply
I invite you to the discussion
Best wishes
Dear Dariusz,
I totally agree with you. However, this is an extremely complicated task.
I believe that one of the tasks of all of us, regarding the issue of the value of biodiversity and the problems that implies its loss, is not only to discuss it on a scientific level, but also to try to propose possible solutions within our competences. We are experiencing difficult times, due to a series of reasons inextricably linked to each other in a complex system that causes perverse and very serious ecological, social, economic problems. Climate change, globalization, the excessive power of markets and finance, directly or indirectly, are increasingly deteriorating the Earth system, the richness and diversity of the living beings and the terrestrial surface on which they live and interact. Of course also the quality of life of humans. Personally I am a supporter of the "glocal" approach, in one of his sometimes contradictory definitions: thinking - and understanding - at a global level to act locally. This does not necessarily mean trying to adapt a local situation to global trends, that is, to give in to a process of homologation, the most often uncritical. On the contrary, it can mean modulating the search for solutions to local problems starting from more or less "local" proposals, but formulated in different areas and situations, even far from our "local". An example that I find very stimulating is that contained in the book "Ganaderia sustentable en el Golfo de México" (G. Halffter et al, 2018. ISBN 978-607-7579-83-0; e-ISBN 978-607-7597-84- 7), which contains the speeches presented in October 2017 during a forum held at the Instituto de Ecología in Xalapa (Veracruz, Mexico). The forum brought together almost 500 participants, Mexicans but also Colombians and Brazilians: scientists and breeders, politicians, administrators and economists. The strategy developed here is based on the conservation - and, if necessary, the restoration - of the grazed environments, so as not to compromise on the one hand the future of these environments, their biodiversity and usability, but also on the other, to increase the profitability of several farming activities. The proposals developed there have entered a very different reality from that of Italy – my country -, and of the Euro-Mediterranean in general: breeding in the humid tropic of Mexico and of American countries characterized by similar conditions. However, I believe that the recent "milk war", which broke out in Sardinia and is destined to extend to other regions, as has already happened in Sicily, is nothing but the tip of an iceberg that will lead us to rethink the situation in the agro-pastoral sector of our countries in economic, sociological, but also ecological terms. I hope that neither the distance of the places, nor the difference in language - the book is written in a fluent Spanish - are considered barriers that preclude access, and hence a reflection about new stategies, that become increasingly urgent
Thank you so much Dr. Dariusz Prokopowicz.
Thank you all for your insightful comments.
It is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and all its interactions. If that sounds bewilderingly broad, that’s because it is. Biodiversity is the most complex feature of our planet and it is the most vital. “Without biodiversity, there is no future for humanity,” says Prof David Macdonald, at Oxford University.
I am glad to know that biodiversity is linked with robust network architecture which is inspired by biological systems.
I agree with Dr. Ken Chukwu. Biodiversity has robust nature inspired network architecture...
Biodiversity is the foundation of ecosystem services to which human well-being is intimately linked. No feature of Earth is more complex, dynamic, and varied than the layer of living organisms that occupy its surfaces and its seas, and no feature is experiencing more dramatic change at the hands of humans than this extraordinary, singularly unique feature of Earth. This layer of living organisms...the biosphere...through the collective metabolic activities of its innumerable plants, animals, and microbes physically and chemically unites the atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere into one environmental system within which millions of species, including humans, have thrived. Breathable air, potable water, fertile soils, productive lands, bountiful seas, the equitable climate of Earth’s recent history, and other ecosystem services are manifestations of the workings of life
Very diverse with useful architecture.....Useful in agriculture and all systems
Dear Friends and Colleagues of RG,
Biodiversity is diverse in virtually unlimited degree, which results from the essence of processes of evolution of species, filet lines and entire ecosystems. It is thanks to the millions of years of evolutionary processes on Earth that there are so many different natural and highly diverse ecosystems in which different species of flora, fauna, fungi and microorganisms adapt to life in different and very diverse geographical and climatic environments.
The largest biodiversity of ecosystems and species functions in natural environmental environments in which ecosystems have evolved without human impact through millions of years of climatic and geographical conditions enabling the development of various life forms. These types of high biodiversity sites can be found in unpolluted rainforest ecosystems in tropical forests, in temperate climates and in coral reefs.
Unfortunately, human civilization activity contributes to the successive and accelerating process of biodiversity reduction by dying out species of living organisms. The areas of natural natural ecosystems are decreasing, including those in which the greatest biodiversity is diagnosed, such as the rainforests of the Amazon. The protection of naturalistic ecosystems and thus the protection of the planet's biodiversity is the most important challenge for mankind in the 21st century.
Best wishes
Thank you so much for sharing your useful thoughts Dr. Dariusz Prokopowicz.