Portal:Marine Biodiversity/Intro

Biodiversity is an all-inclusive term to describe the total variation among living organisms of our planet. In its simplest form, biodiversity or biological diversity

is therefore 'Life on Earth' and includes marine biodiversity 'Life in the Seas and Oceans.` The marine environment has a very high biodiversity because 32 out of the 33 described animal phyla are represented in there. Biodiversity includes four main components: Genetic diversity refers to the genetic variation that occurs among members of the same species, Species diversity (taxonomic diversity) refers to the variety of species or other taxonomic groups in an ecosystem, Ecosystem diversity refers to the variety of biological communities found on earth (with ecosystem diversity we generally consider its two levels, that is, communities and ecosystems) and Functional diversity refers to the variety of biological processes, functions or characteristics of a particular ecosystem;