BIODIVERSITY IS MUCH MORE THAN JUST COUNTING THE SPECIES
Today, being World Environment Day, why not celebrate the environmentalist living inside each of us? The 2020 theme being 'Celebrate biodiversity', let's conserve and protect this biodiversity, which is very much essential for us. It's an idea that is increasingly in vogue for ecologists. Biodiversity doesn't have to be just about the number of a species in an ecosystem. Equally important to keeping an ecosystem healthy and resilient are the species' different characteristics and the things they can do - in terms of specific traits such as branch length or body size.
It may be necessary for understanding and forecasting how flora and fauna cope with a changing climate. For decades, the study of biodiversity was essentially a numbers game: the more species an ecosystem had, the more stable and resilient to change it was thought to be. That mindset made sense because there was so little information available about the structures of an ecosystem and the functions of species within it. However, now, advances in molecular biology, have enabled study of microbes en masse. Satellites can assess traits such as tree - canopy height and marine plankton productivity.
First of all, genotypic diversity within a particular prokaryote species can be incredibly high. Members of one bacterial species share parts of their genome encoding essential metabolic and informational functions (core genomes), but often carry unique, strain - specific sequences for adaptation to local environmental pressures. Secondly, the phenotypic diversity of living organisms is greater than their genotypic diversity. Biological entities that exhibit complex life cycles display phenotypic plasticity. This can confer the capacity to anticipate predictable seasonal changes or react to unpredictable changes by re - modelling physiological processes to compensate for the negative effects of changing conditions.
One post is not just enough to write about biodiversity. I can go on writing about biodiversity, but going by my readers' interests, I'm keeping this article short. Any questions can be posted in the comments section or mailed to me.. Finally, I would like to conclude this article by saying that the importance of diversity in ensuring the robustness of biological systems suggests that decreasing the diversity of natural ecosystems could, in the future, lead to their sudden disruption, which would further hamper our ability to maintain stable food production.
Recently, I guess, most of you out there, might have come across the poor pregnant elephant that was killed in Kerala. It seems like a beginning to put an end to the elephant species - Loxodonta... Let's put a full stop to such cruel acts to live a better peaceful life, by protecting our biodiversity..
Happy World Environment Day !!
It may be necessary for understanding and forecasting how flora and fauna cope with a changing climate. For decades, the study of biodiversity was essentially a numbers game: the more species an ecosystem had, the more stable and resilient to change it was thought to be. That mindset made sense because there was so little information available about the structures of an ecosystem and the functions of species within it. However, now, advances in molecular biology, have enabled study of microbes en masse. Satellites can assess traits such as tree - canopy height and marine plankton productivity.
First of all, genotypic diversity within a particular prokaryote species can be incredibly high. Members of one bacterial species share parts of their genome encoding essential metabolic and informational functions (core genomes), but often carry unique, strain - specific sequences for adaptation to local environmental pressures. Secondly, the phenotypic diversity of living organisms is greater than their genotypic diversity. Biological entities that exhibit complex life cycles display phenotypic plasticity. This can confer the capacity to anticipate predictable seasonal changes or react to unpredictable changes by re - modelling physiological processes to compensate for the negative effects of changing conditions.
One post is not just enough to write about biodiversity. I can go on writing about biodiversity, but going by my readers' interests, I'm keeping this article short. Any questions can be posted in the comments section or mailed to me.. Finally, I would like to conclude this article by saying that the importance of diversity in ensuring the robustness of biological systems suggests that decreasing the diversity of natural ecosystems could, in the future, lead to their sudden disruption, which would further hamper our ability to maintain stable food production.
Recently, I guess, most of you out there, might have come across the poor pregnant elephant that was killed in Kerala. It seems like a beginning to put an end to the elephant species - Loxodonta... Let's put a full stop to such cruel acts to live a better peaceful life, by protecting our biodiversity..
Happy World Environment Day !!
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