Types of biodiversity

This article reviews the concept of biodiversity and provides an overview of the same at an ecological, species, and genetic level.

Imagine that you go on a hike in a tropical rainforest. You come across a stream in the middle of the forest, complete with mossy rocks and a small waterfall.

You look around at your surroundings, marvelling at all the types of life you see around you.

That's right - all of those types of life count as biodiversity of your surroundings! Broadly speaking, biodiversity simply means the variety of life present in a place - in a room, the ocean, or even the Earth.

Read on to discover more about the common types of biodiversity.

Let's start with a bigger picture, and zoom into the details as we go.

Ecological biodiversity
This is the largest scale of biodiversity, because it compares the diversity across different ecosystems. For example, the distribution of life forms within a desert will be very different from those in a mangrove.

Species biodiversity Once we've entered an ecosystem, we can look at the life forms within that region. The types of species of organisms, and how many of each type there are in an area, together make up species biodiversity. For example, Antarctica might contain several types of penguins, but only one or two types of bear, and definitely no camels.

Genetic biodiversity Zooming in even further, we can find more and more differences even within a single species. For example, if you've ever been to a botanical garden, you would have seen several types of roses (too many, some people might say), with different colors and sizes. This difference in characteristics is due to genetic variation within a species, or genetic biodiversity.