SUMMARY BIODIVERSITY

Biodiversity has emerge as a scientific topic with a high degree of social prominence and consequently of political important. The scientist s wish to see programs to conserve biodiversity implemented , they must be aware of political aspect of problem and be prepared to make the compromises that are necessary when one enter s into the political arena. The need to compromise with public opinion is well recognized by NGOs (Non-Govermental Organisations) and other groups which practice environmental activism and often the result is a political agenda that has only a tenuous connection with scientific with scientific reality. Conservationist face similar issue just as campaigns against cruelty to animals often deal more with the human appeal of the animal than with its actual suffering, so species loss is often seen more in term of attractiveness of the species to humans than any biological factors. The current public emphasis on biodiversity is fairly new, and it is interesting to consider how the concept developed. During the past half-century or so there has been a growing awareness of the importance of natural ecosystems and a desire to conserve rather than simply exploit our environment. Over time our appreciation of ecology has developed and most people today appreciate that the lowly earthworm has as much important as beautiful egrets and cuddly pandas. Therefore the next step in public understanding was that all species play a role in the global ecosystem and should be conserved. The problem with all this is that extinction is a natural phenomenon which occurs even in the absence of human pressure and evolutionary history is a record of species being wiped out by natural occurrences or being superseded by better adapted life form. One option is to reduce the emphasis on individual species and focus on biodiversity, a vague concept but one which captures the idea that we dont want a lot of species to go extinct. Because of the transition from conserving species to conserving biodiversity, much attention has been directed to tropical gulfs and forests and other hotspots where many different species are to be found. The conserving species to conserving biodiversity is a confusing one, and even in the scientific literature it is not always clear what it meant. Quite the country, humans often deliberately reduce biodiversity to achieve their goals. Then, close to home, few people want a diverse

ecosystem flourishing where they live and those that do keep it in flower pots and behind glass walls. Modern mankind is not always comfortable with nature and prefers to visit it during a drastic reduction in habitat for plants and animals that could quite happily coexist with human but are excluded from recreational area like beaches. There are many type of biodiversity but only three main categories will be considered. One is genetic diversity which can refer to the diversity of genes within a single species as well as between species. Another is taxonomic diversity, based of course on the different taxa contained within an ecosystem. The third is functional diversity, which recognizes the variety of roles that different organism. The importance of genetic diversity has long been recognized in agriculture where the danger of disease wiping out a single strain of organism is a constant concern. It protects ecosystems against other forms of environmental change not only disease and diversity within a species is the driver behind evolutionary adaption. The concept of genetic diversity also applies between populations ,since species replacement in response to environmental change usually indicates that the replacement species is genetically better suited to the changed conditions. It becomes especially important in the context of climate change and other local or global environmental shifts, since it plays a critical role in determine how communities will adapt to stress. If the components of an ecological community have sufficient genetic breadth to adapt, then the community structure will be relative robust and will probably survive with little change. However ,if the community is stressed then it is likely that genetic breadth will be reduce and only those individuals optimally suited to current conditions will be present, and these are ones that will be most affected by environmental changes. Next is taxonomic diversity. It is probably the most widely recognized form of biodiversity but it may also be the least meaningful. It can be defined in many ways but basically it involves identifying the number of different taxa and possibly weighting them by abundance of individuals. Calculations of taxonomic biodiversity tend to be limited by the taxonomic expertise available, especially at lower tropic levels whales are easy to classify but nematode taxonomists are in short supply. An additional problem is that the degree of separation between species varies and it is not always convincing to argue that the difference between two species of isopods is just as significant as that between shark and a sea anemone. Warwick (2004) consider a type of diversity measure in which the taxonomic distance between species is taken into account so that an ecosystem in which different families or classes are well represented would have a higher biodiversity than one in which there were many species

from a single genus. This resolves some of the concerns about taxonomic differences, although it still seems a bit artificial even though they do not seem that different from each other in terms of their functioning with the ecosystem. The most important form of biodiversity is functional diversity, the kind of diversity that ensures that every task that needs doing within an ecosystem gets done. It does not help to have thousands of species of herbivores in a system if there are no primary producers to feed them and no detritivores to clean up after them. But there are major difficulties in defining functional diversity, not least of which is defining what the various functions are and who is capable of carrying them out. The niche is classically associated with existing populations (Hutchinson 1957) and strict Hutchinsonians reject the concept of an empty niche, which by definition as not associated with any existing organisms. This is however a valuable concept in understanding biodiversity so it is worth exploring. Reason of this concept fits in with biodiversity is that it helps to be able to describe an ecosystem where some species have been removed as containing empty niches, which can represent either which can represent either ecological roles which are no longer being carried out or opportunities for invasive species. This can be visualized by analogy to Soviet-era housing, with several families sharing apartments designed for one. The potential niche of each family is the apartment to which it has been assigned and if a room or apartment is vacant it represents an empty niche. A diverse ecosystem is usually one in which the niches are closely packed, in which every room is occupied by a different family to stretch the analogy (Christiansen and fenchel 1977). While we cannot make totally sweeping assertions about loss of diversity and in particular about the replacement of several species occupying small closely packed niches by a single species with a broad niche, there are certainly grounds for concern. First of all the success of an invading species is often due to the lack of predator adapted to remove it but if its predators eventually manage to follow it the result is destabilization of ecosystem. Second, an invader with a broad actual niche which is almost as large as its potential niche is unlikely to exploit it as fully as native species whose actual niches are compressed through competitive pressure. In particular if environmental conditions shift an exotic species with a broad niche may have the ability be squeezed into a smaller actual niche leaving some of the environment hyperspace unoccupied. While the idea of defining biodiversity in terms of niches rather than species is speculative and it will certainly not sit well with some of the classical interpretations of the niche, it offers a potential formalism for investigating biodiversity under conditions of environmental change that

may have some advantages over functional biodiversity since it may be easier to identify changes in the possible niche structure of a changed environment than changes in functional requirements. Aside from the inevitability of natural extinction there are forces beyond the control of the scientific community or environmental agencies which force us to admit that some battles cannot be won. The concept of triage was developed by Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey (1832) Napoleons chief surgeon and is still used today in medical situations where the need for medical attention exceeds the resources available. The same approach ca be considered in dealing with species at risk. Many species are not endangered and need not be targets of conservation campaigns. Conservation efforts can better be directed at species which are endangered but can plausibly be saved. The concept of triage is similar to the use of costeffectiveness criteria in economic. A battlefield physician confronting three casualties and evaluating the probable outcomes of treating them might conclude that one patient needs treatment to save his eyesight. Another will probably die anyway, but with a small chance of recovery with treatment and the third is bleeding to death, but medical care would probably save his life. All merit treatment but if there is only time to treat one, the physician will probably chose saving life over saving eyes and will pick the patient with the best chance of recovery. This would be the best use of his time. The hardest parts of conservation is trying to decide where to direct ones limited effort and resources and this is especially hard when the outcome is likely to be extinction is a factor that upsets both scientist and laymen and for the scientific community the prospect of losing a species before we learn about it is doubly distressing. Even so we have to balance our priorities carefully to make wise choices. At the top of any list of factors that make a species a good candidate for public support is charisma. Second factor that again may not correspond to the priorities of scientist nor of many environmentalist is the value of a species to man. Fortunately there is a place for an ecological concern is conservation and the role of species their function within the ecosystem is a matter of growing public awareness. However there are more technical issue about the ecological roles that plants and animals play which probably have to be worked out within the scientific community. All of these concerns ignore a factor that does not necessarily fall under the heading of biodiversity at least as it is sometimes defined but which seems critical to any discussion of species conservation. Next is there are many obstacles that make the life of a conservationist hard and it is important to understand the rationale behind resistance to conservation efforts. Although scientists tend to

view all species and habitats with the enthusiasm that a thirst for knowledge generate , this attitude is not widely shared and often the environment that most intrigue the scientific community such as marsh lands generate little excitement among the population at large. In speaking of biodiversity we tend to focus uncritically on conservation of species but there are some species that might arguably be eliminated from the biosphere. There is general agreement that certain disease organisms should be eliminated. We tend to think of non-native species as irrelevant to calculation of biodiversity but this raises the question of how long an invasive species must be present before it consider a native. No species has been present forever so we need to ask how long a species has been present and how well integrated it is in order to evaluate its place in the biodiversity debate. In some cases the non-native species are a natural replacement for native species which have become extinct. Some of the attention in biodiversity studies has focussed on biodiversity hotspots, regions where enormous numbers of distinct species can be found. Consider for example an archipelago or any other system of separated island. In almost every case we find that each island has several unique species, usually of organisms lie snails which diffuse slowly. We do not really understand what determines the number of species in an ecosystem, or why some systems have many more than others (Hutchinson 1959). Speciation can occur through many mechanisms island biogeography is just one of many ways in which a species can split into two, as separated subpopulations evolve slightly differently, especially in the presence of any environmental gradient. Even the absence of any divisive effect, species ca split into two through bifurcation. This leads us into the Pandoras box of evolutionary theory, and it is difficult to see how we can judge biodiversity without understanding how it arises. Underlying some of the questions about ecosystem dynamics and the ways in which biodiversity changes are the possibilities of major alterations, either natural or anthropogenic, in the structure of communities. The realisation that if we fail to conserve some species and it goes extinct is one of the most frightening aspects when dealing with biodiversity is, it will be gone forever there is no chance of recovery. This element of finality is probably one of the reasons why conservation has achieved the social impact it has, and the awareness that mankind has vanish such impressive creatures as the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the Stellers sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas),and the dodo (Raphus cucillatus) is evidence that the permanent loss of prized species is possible.