Biodiversity

Biodiversity in an ecosystem refers to all member species in an environment. Each member has an important role to play within the ecosystem and the lack of any member can have negative consequences for the whole. It also includes all the different habitats, biological communities, and ecological processes within the ecosystem. Biodiversity enables an ecosystem to have the ability to prevent and recover from a variety of disasters such as fire, disease, or major climate …

…not independent of one another. One must understand that the larger meaning of biodiversity encompasses the diversity of genes within species, of species within ecosystems, and of the ecosystems within the biosphere. Each segment is equally important to thehealth and survival of the whole. Loss of a healthy, diverse ecosystem can lead to the loss of species which in turn can result in loss of genetic material...each loss decreasing the vitality of the total.