Biodiversity and society

Question 1

heterogenous environment

Answer 1

environments that look different

Question 2

Biodiversity

Answer 2

The variability among living organisms from all sources, includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems

8.7 species estimated

Question 3

what causes biodiversity loss

Answer 3

pollution
overexploitation
habitat loss
climate change

Question 4

Biodiversity loss

Answer 4

timely issue
potentially order of magnitude beyond background rate

we should care for many reasons, ecosystem services (need to protect all species) but we really only care about the parts that are helpful for us

Question 5

Niche Complementarity hypothesis

Answer 5

if each species uses different part of the environment, different niche, increase in biodiversity, more productive

eventually, there is some overlap, species abundance level off (asymptotic)

Question 6

Biomass relation to other services

Answer 6

ex: relation between carbon stock and higher biodiversity in that area

decomposition increases with biodiversity, worse for carbon stock

Question 7

Stability importance

Answer 7

Increase in biomass leads to stability

loss of biomass leads to a loss in stability

rare species have the ability to adapt if the common species happen to be lost due to changing environment

resiliency

Question 8

Portfolio Effect

Answer 8

Having more species averages out probability that all species will go extinct in a certain area, be more stable

one species may go extinct at a certain time but the probability that they all do is very low

different environments can also help

Question 9

What are we doing to protect biodiversity?

Answer 9

protecting marine, terrestrial areas, endangered species
global pacts
detect improvements, how? policies may fail and we won’t know!

details are important