IB Environmental systems and societies 3.1A Biodiversity Key Definitions

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life in an ecosystem, encompassing different levels of biological organization.

Ecosystem resilience refers to an ecosystem’s ability to recover from disturbances and return to its original state or adapt to a new equilibrium.

Evolution is the cumulative change in the heritable characteristics of a population over generations.

Genetic diversity is the variety of genes within a species, allowing for adaptation to environmental changes.

Habitat diversity is the range of different habitats present in an ecosystem or within a geographical area.

A keystone species is an organism that has a disproportionately large impact on its ecosystem relative to its population size.

Species diversity is the variety of species in an ecosystem, including both species richness (the number of species) and species evenness (the relative abundance of each species).