Definitions
"Biodiversity" is most commonly used to replace the more clearly defined and long established terms, species diversity and species richness. Biologists most often define biodiversity as the "totality of genes, species, and ecosystems of a region". An advantage of this definition is that it seems to describe most circumstances and presents a unified view of the traditional three levels at which biological variety has been identified:
- species diversity
- ecosystem diversity
- genetic diversity
In 2003 Professor Anthony Campbell at Cardiff University, UK and the Darwin Centre, Pembrokeshire, defined a fourth level: Molecular Diversity.
This multilevel construct is consistent with Dasmann and Lovejoy. An explicit definition consistent with this interpretation was first given in a paper by Bruce A. Wilcox commissioned by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) for the 1982 World National Parks Conference. Wilcox's definition was "Biological diversity is the variety of life forms...at all levels of biological systems (i.e., molecular, organismic, population, species and ecosystem)...". The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit defined "biological diversity" as "the variability among living organisms from all sources, including, 'inter alia', terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems". This definition is used in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
One textbook's definition is "variation of life at all levels of biological organization".
Geneticists define it as the diversity of genes and organisms. They study processes such as mutations, gene transfer, and genome dynamics that generate evolution.
Measuring diversity at one level in a group of organisms may not precisely correspond to diversity at other levels. However, tetrapod (terrestrial vertebrates) taxonomic and ecological diversity shows a very close correlation.
Read more about this topic: Biodiversity
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