Biodiversity is a term commonly used in the media when it comes to any issue that is environmental in nature.

But do we really understand this term and why biodiversity is important to our planet and to the organisms that call it home. In this week's article I hope to show that biodiversity plays a role in our environment and to humans.

The first step to understanding biodiversity is to define it. There are numerous definitions of biodiversity. But simply put, biodiversity is "The diversity of biological life forms" and "the variation of taxonomic life forms for a given biome or ecosystem". Biodiversity provides all organisms on this planet with a variety of food. It also provides materials which can be used in handicrafts and in a variety of industries, such as in pharmaceuticals- vaccines. Therefore, species lost might also be of medical importance, especially if the compounds they contain or produce cannot be synthesised.

Biodiversity also has a role to play in carrying out ecosystem services. However, the amount of ecosystem services that are carried out are too many to go into in detail in this article, but here is an example which can illustrate the role biodiversity plays. One main ecosystem service is helping plants reproduce. For instance, some crop species depend on insects like wasps, bees and butterflies for pollination. Other plants produce fruit which are consumed by bats, birds and small mammals that defecate the seeds quite a distance from the parent plant. Yet still other plants produce seeds with barbs that catch on the fur of animals and deposited elsewhere to propogate. So one can see that with so many methods of dispersal, without biodiversity many organisms would cease to exist, especially since some plants target certain animal species to use as agents of dispersal or pollination.

Biodiversity also provides us with an opportunity for education. Simply put, there will be no new species for scientists to discover and describe their interactions among each other and their environment. It may sound that without biodiversity scientists would be out of a job, and this is true. But without biodiversity and our knowledge of it we would not understand how biodiversity is needed by our planet. This is best seen by looking at the ecosystem services that biodiversity plays a role in carrying out.

Some areas are fortunate, in that they are classified as "biodiversity hotspots". This means that the region supports at least 1,500 plant species found nowhere else in the world and has lost at least 70% of its original habitat. The concept of biodiversity hotspots is quite recent, coming about in 1988 by the British ecologist Norman Myers. The purpose of coining this term was to highlight areas that required preservation when it came to the species found there. Currently, biodiversity hotspots are found on six continents, excluding Antarctica. However, in general biodiversity hotspots are found in areas close to the Equator and along shorelines. Trinidad & Tobago are designated " biodiversity hotspots. However, the status of these areas as biodiversity hotspots is not permanent.

Unfortunately, the value of biodiversity is not realised or appreciated until it is gone and there are many factors that cause loss of biodiversity. One of the most obvious consequences of biodiversity loss is the loss of food sources to other animals in the habitat and to humans. Sometimes it takes the loss of a few species, referred to as keystone species which could lead to the collapse of the food web in that habitat. Another consequence of biodiversity loss is that it increases the vulnerability of the species to pests and diseases. For example, in farmland where large expanses of a single crop are planted, that is monocultures. Monocultures grow the species of that crop that is desired by the majority of consumers, so that many other species of that crop for which demand is low are not grown and may become extinct. Monocultures have led to about 75% of the extinction of crop varieties.

However, although a population of the crop species may be large, that does not mean that it is healthy. Without breeding with other varieties those individuals do not possess a great genetic diversity and in turn the ability to fend off pests and diseases.

Many other factors influence the existences of biodiversity, such as, logging and agriculture which has the effect of destroying the habitat and microhabitats that house numerous species.

Hunting is another reason for biodiversity loss as it actively decreases the number of members of a species found there. Overhunting will remove individuals that are of reproductive age or those that are too young to produce offspring to continue the species. Sometimes the cause is not localised but more general like climate change, which will not only affect the habitat as a whole but all the microhabitats. Organisms in microhabitats are more at risk for extinction as they can tolerate narrow ranges of conditions like humidity and temperature.

Therefore, the organisms found in these microhabitats account for a large amount of the biodiversity present. Finally, besides localised and generalised factors, some factors like government decisions which take place great distances away, have a great influence on the existence of habitats and biodiversity hotspots. This is because they produce the legislature that protects these areas from development, they also regulate the actions like hunting or the amount of resources set aside to patrol these areas to protect them against activities like arson.

Therefore it can be seen that biodiversity is not just a term to be used loosely when it comes to talking about environmental issues. Instead it can be used as an indication of the health of our ecosystems as well as their existence, without which ,humans on this planet would be in jeopardy.