the.com/biodiversity
every living thing auditioning for a planet that keeps rewriting the script
means The variety of living things in a place or on the planet — the full range of species, genes, and ecosystems and how they fit together.
from A modern compound stitched from Greek 'bios' (life) and Latin 'diversitas' (difference, variety). It began as the longer 'biological diversity' among scientists, then got squeezed into the snappier 'biodiversity' in the 1980s, when conservationists needed a single word to rally around — a coinage credited to that era's push to name what we were losing.
- unknown species
- scientists estimate 86% remain undescribed
- insect bulk
- beetles alone outnumber all vertebrates combined
- hidden majority
- most life on Earth is microbial
- genetic library
- each extinction deletes irreplaceable evolutionary code
- ocean depths
- more species unnamed than named below 200 meters
amazon rainforest — 10% of all species on earth, ~390 billion individual trees across 5.5 million km²
congo basin rainforest — second largest rainforest, 10,000+ plant species and forest elephants, gorillas, okapi
coral triangle — 76% of world's coral species in waters between indonesia, malaysia, papua new guinea
madagascar — 88% of mammals found nowhere else on earth, 5,000+ plant species endemic