Orange-bellied Parrot - With only a few hundred of these parrots left in the wild, how does there presence or absence effect the conservation of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is a major buzzword these days, but my guess is that many people don’t grasp all that is rolled into that single word. There are multiple measures of biodiversity and yet there is really only one commonly understood definition, the variety of life in any given area or ecosystem.
Yet for scientists, biodiversity can be understood on many levels. For instance, let’s imagine three forests. Each forest has 5000 individual birds flying around. Forest #1 has 100 species of birds, each represented by 50 individuals; Forest #2 has 100 species of birds, 99 of which are represented by 2 individuals and the 100th species represented by 4,802 individuals. Finally Forest #3 has 1 species with 5000 individuals.
If we are talking strictly about the variety of life, as stated above, then wouldn’t Forests #1 and #2 have the same biodiversity? If we are talking abundance, well they all have 5,000 individuals. So what exactly is biodiversity and why is it so important to conservation? How can we distinguish between these different forests in a more meaningful way? Let’s dive in and get our hands dirty.
