Biodiversity and Conservation Test - 4

Producer-decomposer food chain keep an ecosystem self-sustaining and viable. Producer converts solar energy into chemical energy in form of food and decomposer breaks complex organic matter into simpler forms to maintain ecosystem.

Alpha diversity refers to the diversity within a particular area of ecosystem and usually expressed by the number of species in that ecosystem.

Wetland ecologists have already documented the following environmental benefits of wetlands: water purification, flood protection, shoreline stabilization, groundwater recharge, and streamflow maintenance. Wetlands also provide habitat for fish and wildlife, including endangered species.

Biodiversity includes not only the world's species with their unique evolutionary histories, but also genetic variability within and among populations of species and the distribution of species across local habitats, ecosystems, landscapes, and whole continents or oceans.

Biodiversity can be classified on the basis of community, habitat and landscape but not on the basis of population of particular species in the biosphere.

A keystone species is a plant or animal that plays a unique and crucial role in the way an ecosystem functions. Without keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether.

Keystone species maintain the diversity of ecosystem by changing food chain and are responsible for stability of ecosystem. Tiger, Salmon and Sea Otters are keystone species.

Two or more forms of same species is called polymorphism. Coelenterates are of two kinds alternating with each other. Polys forms remain fixed with attached with substratum and medusa forms are free-floating stages.

In food chain, each organism has its own role in flow of energy and nutrient cycle. If snakes become extinct the loss will make the biological network imbalanced. Their gene pool will lost forever that results into loss of biodiversity.

A rare species is a group of organisms that are very uncommon, scarce, or infrequently encountered. This designation may be applied to either a plant or animal taxon, and may be distinct from the term endangered or threatened species.

Represented by few individuals or distributed over narrow geographic areas, Rare species are generally considered to have little influence on the functioning of an ecosystem compared with more common species.

Biodiversity is not uniform throughout the world but varies with latitude and altitude. Favourable environmental conditions favour speciation and make it possible for a larger number of species to exist there , i.e., biodiversity is more in such areas than the others. Latitudinal Gradients Species diversity decreased from equator towards poles. The tropics harbor more species than temperate and polar regions.