BIOL 121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Marmot, Binomial Nomenclature
Document Summary
A measure of the variety of life, biodiversity changes over times biodiversity described on 3 levels: Ecosystem diversity: describes the variety of habitats present. Species diversity: measure of the number of species and the number of individuals of each species present. Genetic diversity: refers to total amount of genetic variability present. Exact number of species not known, why: species counts biased by our tendency to study certain organisms more than others. Organisms in soil are difficult to locate and difficult to quantify: the type of habitat or location may make counting species difficult (deep sea organisms, size often complicates the detection and counting of species. The smaller the organisms, the more difficult it is to find them and to identify them. Not always easy, when some species are capable of cross breeding, how do you know that they are distinct species: morphological (appearances, biological species concept: populations that inbreed fertile offspring.
