Synonyms
Definition
Biodiversity designates the condition of life on Earth in terms of its variation at all levels of biological organization, from genes to ecosystems. By extension, it is used to designate life on Earth itself, most generally at the species level but often also at all organization levels altogether. The political impact of the term led to a definition adopted by the International Convention on Biological Diversity (Art.2): “Biological diversity’ means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (Convention on Biological Diversity 1992).
History
Although first introduced in the end of the 1960s, the word biodiversity, as a contraction of biological diversity, has been coined by Walter G. Rosen while preparing a national US scientific forum...
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References and Further Reading
Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) N°30619. United Nations, treaty series, 1760, 1993. pp 142–308
Consortium Barcode of Life (2010) http://www.barcodinglife.org/
Dirzo R, Raven PH (2003) Global state of biodiversity and loss. Annu Rev Environ Resour 28:137–167
Diversitas (2002) Diversitas science plan. Diversitas, Paris
Diversitas (2010) An international programme of biodiversity science. http://www.diversitas-international.org
Edwards JL, Lane MA, Nielsen ES (2000) Interoperability of biodiversity databases: biodiversity information on every desktop. Science 289(5488):2312–2314
Erwin TL (1982) Tropical forests: their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species, 3Coleopterists’. Bulletin 36:74–75
GBIF (2010) Global Biodiversity Information Facility. http://www.gbif.org.
Golding GB, Hanner R, Hebert P (eds) (2009) Special issue on barcoding. Mol Ecol Resour 9(supplement) 1:1–267
Hennig W (1966) Phylogenetic systematics. University of Illinois Press, Urbana
IPBES (2010) Intergovernmental science-policy platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services. http://IPBES.net
Larigauderie A, Mooney HA (2010) The intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services: moving a step closer to an IPCC-like mechanism for biodiversity. Curr Opin Environ Sustain 2:1–2
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) http://www.maweb.org
Naeem S, Bunker D, Hector A, Loreau M, Perrings C (2009) Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Scholes RJ et al (2008) Toward a global biodiversity observation system. Science 321:1044–1045
Wilson EO (ed) (1988) Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington, DC
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Tillier, S., Lecointre, G. (2014). Biodiversity. In: Amils, R., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_1836-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_1836-4
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