3.7 Components of bidiversity

• What are the three components of biodiversity?

  Genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity.
• What is meant by genetic diversity?

  Number and frequency of all the alleles within a population.
• Why does low genetic diversity increase the risk of species becoming extinct?

  It may limit a species ability to adapt to changing conditions.
• What does species diversity compromise of?

  -the number of different species in an ecosystem (the species richness)

  -the proportion of each species in the ecosystem (the species abundance)
• what happens when a population of a species dies out?

  It may lose some of its genetic diversity.
• What is meant by ecosystem diversity?

  The number of distinct ecosystems within a defined area.