Marine Biodiversity

What is marine biodiversity?

Biodiversity is an all-inclusive term to describe the total variation among living organisms of our planet. In its most simple form, biodiversity or biological diversity is therefore 'Life on Earth' and marine biodiversity is 'Life in the Seas and Oceans.` The marine environment has high diversity because 32 out of the 33 described animal phyla are represented in the marine environment.

Biodiversity includes four main components:

• Genetic diversity which refers to the genetic variation that occurs among members of the same species.

• Species diversity (taxonomic diversity) which refers to the variety of species or other taxonomic groups in an ecosystem.

• Ecosystem diversity which refers to the variety of biological communities found on earth.

• Functional diversity which refers to the variety of biological processes, functions or characteristics of a particular ecosystem.

Genetic, species and ecosystem diversity are also often grouped as ‘structural diversity’. An example of species diversity is a measure of the number of all codfish in a community.

An example of functional diversity is the number of filter feeders in an ecosystem compared to the number of grazers. Functional diversity is thought to be one of the main factors determining the long-term stability of an ecosystem and its ability to recover from major disturbances.

Biodiversity encompasses many levels of organization including genes, species, habitats, communities and ecosystems. Although species diversity is the most commonly used measure of taxonomic diversity (or diversity between types of organisms), other measures of taxonomic diversity exist, the most common of which is phyletic diversity. Phyletic diversity is the variation in the working body plans (phyla) of organisms. An example of a phylum is the Arthropoda, which includes organisms such as crabs, lobsters, shrimp as marine animals and insects and spiders as terrestrial organisms.