Teaming Up with
Genetic diversity deals with the variation of genes within a given species. Generally, having a diverse gene pool is a quality of a healthy species. Even among humans, we seek partners with a certain degree of genetic separation from our own families. If a gene pool only cycles through the same sets over time, genetic resilience to external changes weakens. We typically see this in the form of being more prone to illnesses. The world is constantly changing, and there are a good number of microscopic assassins out there looking to exploit species genetics. By having diverse genes within a species, the likelihood of survival keeps up with the rate of an ever-changing world.
Species diversity takes jumps up a level and captures the variation of species within a community. In our example of the forest earlier, I had assumed your imagined ecosystem have an abundance of different trees. While this seems like a small thing to point out, it's a very important indicator of a healthy forest. If an ecosystem is, say completely filled with a shade intolerant tree species, if anything happens to this forest that prevents these trees from getting sunlight, the forest has a very low chance of survival. |
Biodiversity is the concept of all living things that make up Earth's systems. |
High biodiversity translates to high survivability. |
Why is Biodiversity ImportantSo we have all of these ways to measure the diversity of our home and the communities that make up the Earth. Why does this matter?
Simply put, no one species can do everything that is needed for the Earth to function at the level that it does. Most every living thing that has survived for any duration on this planet has found some way to use the resources on the Earth to make a living. Everything that these creatures do also has an effect, and these effects are gateways for other creatures to take hold and become a part of a community. For every plant that has grown, there is a system that carries its pollen, be it the wind, an insect, or a bird that allows the plant to reproduce and spread further bringing enough of itself to bear that small animals can thrive, as well as the predators that survive on them. |
If we did see this play out in reality, we might consider this insect population a monoculture, essentially the opposite of biodiversity. This insect could have been the absolute best at pollinating those plants and they out-competed everything else in the community. They don't have many colonies, but they breed very quickly. If one significant event struck their ecosystem in a way that the population couldn't sustain, there are no other populations to take its place, at least not immediately.
This isn't to say that having a lot of a species in an area is an inherently bad thing. If it gets to a point where the species is the sole species performing a function and it is so aggressive that is pushes all other adjacent species away, this can lead to rippling extinction events. It's these scenarios that are why you might hear so much about honeybees in current events. Having a diverse ecosystem is key to being a healthy ecosystem. |
Species diversity ensures that ecosystem services can be performed by multiple creatures. |
Monocultures occur when one species is hyper-efficient in an ecosystem, outcompeting other species and forcing them out. |
As humans move around the planet with more ease and frequency, we potentially bring with us plants, animals, and microorganisms that are completely new to the area. When this happens, the organism can either not be able to adjust to the new ecosystem and simply die off, or it can find a way to survive and integrate with its new home. A problem occurs when this happens and the introduced creature can dominate an ecosystem. This is what we call an "invasive species" and it can be the starting point for the monoculture scenario we illustrated earlier. Now, this doesn't mean all introduced species are bad. Species move around on their own as well. The rate and distance at which these introductions can happen thanks to humans is just not a factor the Earth has had to deal with before, and can reduce biodiversity by way of aggressively out-competing local wildlife and entrenching as a monoculture.
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