What is Biodiversity?

And, why does it matter at Earthstream?

We’ve been talking about biodiversity for months, exploring themes like Listening to the Earth through bioacoustics and other related ideas. But somewhere along the way, we skipped a fundamental question: What is biodiversity? And why does it matter?

Let’s dig in.

Photo by Brandon Green on Unsplash

Tapestry of Life

Biodiversity is the tapestry of life on Earth, encompassing the variety of all living organisms: plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms; and the ecosystems they form. This is more than just counting, it’s the intricate relationships and roles each organism plays in maintaining the balance and resilience of ecosystems.

From the smallest bacteria in the soil to the largest whale in the ocean, biodiversity is the measure of life’s richness, complexity, and interconnectedness, reminding us that every living thing contributes to the health of the planet.

Nature is a orchestra, not a solo, so how do we measure life?

Counting Life in Earth

In a teaspoon of good soil, you’re likely to find an entire living universe: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes just to name a few.¹ And, if we took all the soil that existed on Earth and counted the types of creatures that live in soil using their genetics to measure their “uniqueness”: this would give us one way of counting diversity. Soil is pretty boring though isn’t it? It’s just dirt. What’s the difference between one type of bacteria and another — they’re not that interesting?

Well, with bacteria, different species occupy different niches, and they play different roles, even in a grain of soil there are fascinating things happening: After all, one species poop is another one’s meal. And, this chain of complexity and networked behaviour underlies the principles for biodiversity measurements. Ecologists are interested in species variety and abundance as well as the integrity of the ecosystems that they inhabit.

Let’s get into the details of measurement next.

Measurable Biodiversity

Measuring biodiversity has come along in leaps and bounds in the last few years, both from a technology perspective, and from the types and methods of measurement that are implemented in practice. Advanced technology is used to do “counting” and “accounting” for sure, but how the data is summarized and presented, makes for interesting reading. There are several methods.

Species Richness.

Species richness is a count of the number species in a given area. For example, a tropical rain forest is more species rich than a desert, and supports more biodiversity. That’s not saying that deserts aren’t cool! 😎

Using Information Theory

Formal measurements of diversity usually involve information theory: The mathematical study of the quantification, storage and transmission of information.²

One can think of species like faces of a die — the more species the more faces. Thus, the more randomness and the more information. If we talk dice, then a dodecahedron has more potential outcomes than an octahedron. And, in the same way, a randomly sampled individual from a biodiverse area has a smaller chance of belonging to any given species. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Species Abundance

Another measurement direction is through population counts: If an ecosystem can support large populations of particular species, and then this is a good sign. On the other hand species threat is the counter point, and more and more often the case. However, note that abundance and richness need to work together: A case in point is the Florida Everglades, where local wildlife richness has been decimated by the introduction of super-predators like the Burmese Python by, you guessed it, stupid humans.

Ecosystem Integrity

Finally, there is the question of how to put it all together.

How healthy is a given patch of Mother Earth? Is it as healthy as can be? What amount of life can it support? These ways of looking at a system asks about it’s wholeness and capacity for supporting life. And there are vast differences between intact seabeds and disturbed ones, ancient forests and carbon monocultures, or rich natural grasslands with abundant ruminants and commercial game-farms.

In this sphere, newer measurement systems like biocomplexity are the ones that matter. These areas are about the complex species-species interactions and how life creates the environment which, in turn, creates life.

Back to Why?

One of the most popular TED talks on business is Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.” The gist of the talk is about how great great leaders inspire everyone to take action by having strong and appealing “Why’s” that people (and customers) can buy into.

Here’s our why at Earthstream.

Life creates the conditions for life. 

And, we need to focus on creating the conditions for life to make a planet that we’ve degraded habitable again. 

This means finding ways to resource and improve biodiversity locally and globally. 

So, we need to measure, report and finance in order to support those people on the ground that are doing the work. 

That's it. 

Monitoring for signs of life, such as singing birds and allocating resources to make these signs of life go up, seems to be a good way to spend our precious time.

The Balanced View Warning Label

Life can also end the conditions for life: The first mass extinction on Earth was the death of anaerobic species due to the emergence of blue-green algae. How did this happen?

The oxygen in the air which sustains the majority of life as we know it — was their poison.

Thanks for reading.

Push the buttons.

Be well, and have a great month.

1. See the article we wrote called, “The Life Beneath Your Feet” for the lowdown on soil and it’s fascinating contents.

2. See and support Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory.