The term “biodiversity”—short for biological diversity—was first used in the 1980s by scientists to refer to the richness of biological variation on Earth or within a particular region. In their book Saving Nature’s Legacy,...

Biodiversity exists at three interrelated levels: species diversity, genetic diversity, and community-level diversity. When we talk about plant biodiversity, we refer to the full range of plant species, the genetic variation found within those species,...

Biodiversity is the total richness of biological variation. Usually the scope of biodiversity is considered to range from the genetic variation of individual organisms within and among populations of a species to different species occurring together in...

Biodiversity is an ecological notion that refers to the richness of biological types at a range of hierarchical levels, including: (1) genetic diversity within species, (2) the richness of species within communities, and (3) the richness of...

Life on earth began as bacterial cells at least 4,000 million years ago, and it has—with notable, but rare, catastrophic declines in diversity subsequently—expanded, evolved, and complexified across time. In the early-twenty-first century...

Biodiversity is the term applied to the variety of organisms that occupy a given region. This includes all organisms that live in the region, from microscopic protists to large mammals. The region can be a political unit such as a country, a geographic...

Biodiversity, sometimes measured by the total number of different plant and animal species in a given area, emerged as an issue of great importance in the later part of the twentieth century. As an agenda item in many national and global political...

Understanding the nature of ocean life and the patterns of its diversity represents a difficult challenge. Not only are there technical difficulties involved with studying life under water (high pressure, need for oxygen tanks, lack of light), there...

the variety of life found in a place on Earth or, often, the total variety of life on Earth. A common measure of this variety, called species richness, is the count of species in an area. Colombia and Kenya, for example, each have more than 1,000...

Biodiversity is the total richness of biological variation. A result of genetic diversity. The scope of biodiversity ranges from the genetic variation of individual organisms within and among populations of a species to different species existing...

Quantity of plant and animal species found in a given environment. Sometimes habitat diversity (the variety of places where organisms live) and genetic diversity (the variety of traits expressed within a species) are also considered types of...

The totality of life, including genetic capacity, within a defined...

see Convention on...

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological...