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Biology library
Course: Biology library > Unit 30
Lesson 5: Levels of biodiversityEcosystem biodiversity
Ecosystem diversity is a critical aspect of Earth's biodiversity. Ecosystems, defined by habitat and climate, are unique and diverse. Species within ecosystems are specialized and vary globally. Protecting ecosystem diversity is vital, focusing not just on the most biodiverse but on the interconnectedness of all ecosystems. Preserving these complex webs of interactions is essential for the stability of Earth's ecosystems. Created by California Academy of Sciences.
Want to join the conversation?
- what normally happens when demand for scarce natural product rise?(6 votes)
- Biodiversity shrinks and populations decrease as well. Competition increases between species.
There are two choices for organisms, to adapt or to die.(2 votes)
- What would happen if the ecosystem was never here(3 votes)
- There are multiple ecosystems first of all. Second, if one were for some reason to collapse the species in it would go extinct, but with Earth's biodiversity it is very unlikely to happen anytime soon.(5 votes)
- What ecosystem biodiversity works that all animals and plants do and how we protect.(3 votes)
- Explain why biodiversity is an important ecological concept?(2 votes)
- Ecology is a discipline that deals with interactions between living and non-living components within one ecosystem, habitat, biome, or even on the global scale - planet Earth.
Biodiversity speaks of diversity and abundance of species.
The more different species, the more interactions. The more species implies more niches, more competition, more possible food chains, more mutualistic interactions, etc.(2 votes)
- How is ecosystem diversity defined? Is it the diversity of organisms in a particular type of ecosystem over different regions of the earth, or, as defined by wikipedia it is the diversity of ecosystems in a given geographical region?(2 votes)
- ecosystem:different types of plant and animal species living in a particular area interrelated and interdependent on each other(2 votes)
- What if the ecosystem was not there(1 vote)
- What do you mean? Without Ecosystems, the earth would be just a hunk of rock like Mars. And anyway, there are mulitple ecosystems.(2 votes)
Video transcript
(gentle music) - [Narrator] The science of
measuring ecosystem diversity is still pretty young, but scientific knowledge
at the ecosystem level is now recognized as a critical part of understanding total
biodiversity on Earth. Defining ecosystems is hard, but we do know a distinct
ecosystem when we see one. We usually describe an ecosystem in terms of a habitat and
a climatic descriptor, such as tropical rainforest
or arid grassland, but it's important to note
that there's diversity of habitats and ecological processes within each ecosystem type. You can have similar-looking ecosystems that have very different makeups. The name of an ecosystem
doesn't automatically imply that all the species in that ecosystem are the same everywhere in the world. High diversity among types of
ecosystems means that there will also be a high diversity
of species themselves. Each species is specialized
to a type of ecosystem in a particular place. Most people are familiar with ecosystems in terms of where they are, that is, in terms of
ecosystem distributions. A tropical reef in the Philippines will still be a coral reef but, in terms of species composition, could be very, very different
from a reef in the Caribbean. Organisms making up a Philippine
reef might be similar to and do the same jobs as
those in a Caribbean reef, but they will be different species, sometimes very distantly
related species at that. In other words, the
ecosystem functions performed by these different reef
organisms will be the same in spite of how different
the lists of species from each reef might be. And, in turn, the ecosystem
functions will be similar, but the species will be different in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia or reefs off Madagascar or wherever things that we would label a tropical
coral reef might occur. To me, that's the essence
of ecosystem diversity, distinct types of ecosystems, such as tropical reef
or tropical rainforest, combined with the diversity of the species within a specific type of ecosystem. Recognizing this means that we can ask what makes a South American
tropical rainforest different from one in Africa? It's always important to keep
ecosystem diversity in mind in any management or
conservation strategy. We can maximize protection
of species numbers in a given type of ecosystem by protecting the most biodiverse example of that ecosystem in the world. For coral reefs, that would be the ones in
the Philippines, for example. But what about all the others? What effect will there be on the stability of all Earth's ecosystems if we focus on only one example of a
particular ecosystem? Is it enough to preserve
a single ecosystem as a kind of museum of diversity
for that type of ecosystem? I think most scientists
would agree with me that the only successful strategy is to try to maximize the
protection of as many ecosystems and all their unique
biodiversity as possible. And there's another factor to consider when we're talking about biodiversity at the ecosystem level, the interactions between the
different types of ecosystems. The interconnectedness of these
systems is not best served by labeling this or that ecosystem as if it were some kind of distinct entity that can be put in a giant,
imaginary box and guarded. There are complex webs of
interactions among the species that make each type of ecosystem unique. But just as there are complex webs of species interactions within ecosystems, there are webs of interactions
among ecosystems themselves. And what will we lose if we don't attempt to protect
those interactions as well?