biodiversity

• what does the index of diversity measure?

  number and abundance of species
• what are the 3 levels of biodiversity?

  habitat, species, genetic
• habitat diversity?

  the number of different habitats in an area
• what is species biodiversity split into?

  species richness and species evenness
• what is species richness?

  The number of different species in an area.
• what is species evenness?

  number of individuals of each species living in a community
• what is a community?

  all the populations of living organisms in a habitat
• genetic biodiversity?

  variety of genes in a species
• Variations in alleles leads to genetic biodiversity. Greater genetic biodiversity allows for better adaptations to changing environments and is the basis for natural selection.
• species diversity?

  number of different species in a community
• captive breeding: breeding in captivity a small number of individuals, limiting the gene pool
• genetic bottleneck: a reduction in the gene pool of a population due to a sudden reduction in the number of organisms
• founder effect: a small number of individuals colonise a new area, the new population adapts and becomes genetically different from the original population, likely for inbreeding to occur
• polymorphic gene has more than one allele
• to calculate genetic diversity you can measure polymorphism: proportion of polymorphic gene loci = number of polymorphic gene loci/ total number of loci. the higher the proportion, the higher the genetic diversity