Home > Encyclopedia of Science > Biodiversity

• Human threats to biodiversity
• Why is biodiversity important?
• Protection of threatened biodiversity

The term biodiversity refers to the wide range of organisms—plants and animals—that exist within any given geographical region. That region may consist of a plot of land no more than a few square meters or yards, a whole continent, or the entire planet. Most commonly, discussions of biodiversity consider all the organisms that interact with each other in an extended geographical region, such as a tropical rain forest or a subtropical desert.

Concerns about biodiversity are relatively new. Only during the last quarter of the twentieth century did scientists begin to appreciate the vast number of organisms found on Earth and the complex ways in which they interact...