Components of biodiversity

• Components of biodiversity are genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity.

• Genetic diversity is the number and frequency of all the alleles within a population.

  • If one population of a species dies out then the species may have lost some of its genetic diversity, and this may limit its ability to adapt to changing conditions.

• Species diversity comprises the number of different species in an ecosystem (the species richness) and the proportion of each species in the ecosystem (the relative abundance).

  • A community with a dominant species has a lower species diversity than one with the same species richness but no particularly dominant species.

• Ecosystem diversity refers to the number of distinct ecosystems within a defined area.