Biological+Diversity

=__  **Biodiversity**    __= =     =   People all over the world depend heavily on other species for clothing, food, oxygen, shelter, and more. Of all of the prescriptions dispensed from pharmacies in the United States, 25% are derived    from plants. Most of these plants are found in Madagascar. Madagascar has about 8,000 species of flowering plants. 80% of these 8,000 plants are found __only__ in Madagascar. During the past 2,000 years, Madagascar has lost 80% of its forest and about 50% of its native species. The problem in Madagascar represents only a small portion of the environmental issues facing the entire world.

 **"If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." -Aldo Leopold**



There are two different components of diversity. The first of these components is the total number of different species in a community, otherwise known as species richness. The second component is the relative abundance of the different species (Essential Biology.) Species richness pertains to the number of different species in an area while relative abundance is the number of each species in an area. An example of this is an area with trees X, Y, and Z. Imagine there are 5X trees, 5Y trees, and 5Z trees in area one and 10X trees, 2Y trees and 3Z trees in area 2. The species richness in both areas is the same but the area with the most relative abundance would be area 2.  Biological diversity is an indicator of a healthy environment. The more diverse an environment is, the more stable the environment is. A stable environment equals a healthy environment.