Educational Manual Biodiversity is Life A guide for zoo and aquarium educators, teachers and environmentalists. A resource about biodiversity in support of the International Year … Introduction Biodiversity is life. This three-word phrase is the slogan of the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB), a celebration, reflection and call?to?action for the sustainable future of life on Earth. Zoos and aquariums are all about biodiversity. Everything we do comes back to biodiversity. We show it, we study it, we …

Biodiversity – what is it? How many species? Why is it so difficult to answer the ‘how many species’ question? The word ‘biodiversity’ is short for ‘biological diversity’. It refers to the multitude of life that shares the planet with us. We are as much part of biodiversity as a tortoise, tiger, toad, taiga, toadstool or tree. We are not separate from nature. Biodiversity may be considered at three levels of organisation: The species level – about 1.8 mil- • lion species of animals, plants, fungi, algae and microbes have been described and named. No one knows how many species inhabit Earth – estimates vary from 5-100 million. Zoos and aquariums, with maybe several hundred species, maintain the tiniest fraction of biodiversity. And it’s a fraction that is heavily weighted towards the vertebrates – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The ecosystem level – the • world’s species interact and depend on each other in complex webs of life based on energy flow through the processes of eating and avoiding being eaten. Ecosystems vary from polar zones to the rich forests of the wet tropics. Even within broad ecosystem categories, scientists disagree over the finer points of ecosystem classification. There are, for example, at least 40 broad types of freshwater and coastal wetlands and well over 100 sub categories of these (www.ramsar.org) . The genetic level – genes are the • conduits of DNA and DNA is the inheritable unit that makes variation possible between individuals, populations, communities and species…. Where is the biodiversity? Biodiversity is all around us and we are very much part of it. The greatest species diversity is in a number of global ‘hotspots’. A hotspot must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants (>0.5% of the world’s total) as endemics, and it has to be have lost 70% of its original habitat. 50% of named plant species and 42% of named terrestrial vertebrate species are endemic to these hotspots which take up only 2.3% of the world’s land surface. (www.conservation.org , 2009). Resources www.arkive.org | A database of downloadable films, photos, sound recordings and information about global species. Billed as ‘a Noah’s Ark for the internet age’, Arkive is very supportive of zoos and aquariums using its content for IYB activities. www.bgci.org | BGCI is an international organisation that exists to ensure the world-wide conservation of threatened plants, the continued existence of which are intrinsically linked to global issues including poverty, human well-being and climate change.

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