Biodiversity

The term biodiversity (biological diversity) is the variation of living organisms in a given ecosystem and is often used to measure an ecosystem's health, conservation value, or degradation. Some have argued that biodiversity conservation is preferable to a species by species approach to conservation that targets protection and preservation of a few flagship, charismatic species. Biodiversity conservation calls for an understanding of an entire ecosystem and highlights the ecological significance of the all the species the ecosystem harbors.

Biodiversity is not uniformly distributed across the globe; conservation experts have identified areas of concentration of biological richness. J. Mc Neeley, the Chief Biodiversity Officer at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), identified countries with high biological diversity and termed them megadiversity countries. Norman Myers of ...