Geography
Biodiversity
1-Biodiversity is the variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat.
2-It is an essential component of nature and it ensures the survival of human species by providing food, fuel, shelter, medicines and other resources to mankind.
3-The term biological diversity was used first by wildlife scientist and conservationist Raymond F. Dasmann in the year 1968
4-Biodiversity is most commonly used to replace the more clearly defined and long established terms, species diversity and species richness.
5-Genetically biodiversity can be defined as the diversity of alleles, genes and organisms. They study processes such as mutation and gene transfer that drive evolution.
Genetic diversity allows species to adapt to changing environments. This diversity aims to ensure that some species survive drastic changes and thus carry on desirable genes.
6-Biodiversity is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution.
7-Alpha diversity refers to the diversity within a particular area or ecosystem, and is usually expressed by the number of species (i.e., species richness) in that ecosystem.
8-Beta diversity is a comparison of diversity between ecosystems, usually measured as the change in amount of species between the ecosystems.
9-Gamma diversity is a measure of the overall diversity for the different ecosystems within a region.
10-India, with much of its land area in the tropical latitudes, has more than 1,200 species of birds.
Biodiversity and agriculture
1-Agricultural diversity can be divided into two categories: intraspecific diversity, which includes the genetic variety within a single species, like the potato (Solanum tuberosum) .
2-The other category of agricultural diversity is called interspecific diversity and refers to the number and types of different species.
Hotspots
1-A biodiversity hotspot is a region with a high level of endemic species that has experienced great habitat loss.
2- The term hotspot was introduced in 1988 by Norman Myers.
3-While hotspots are spread all over the world, the majority are forest areas and most are located in the tropics.