Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Perspectives on biodiversity
Several interdisciplinary perspectives delimit the contemporary status of biodiversity
as a far-reaching concept in contemporary environmental studies and sciences.
Primary perspectives include: (i) biological and ecological sciences; (ii) environmen-
talism and conservation; (iii) economics and ethics; and (iv) public environmental
science.
The biological sciences, associated particularly with ecology and evolution,
provide a predominant perspective on biodiversity as the 'the variety and variability
among organisms and the ecological complexes in which they occur' (the familiar
defi nition mentioned above). Taxonomy frequently functions as a scientifi c
lingua
franca
. It sees biodiversity as objects of nature that are classifi ed according to sys-
tematic categories ('things' is the term chosen in environmental geography using a
humanities infl ection; see Section see pages 60-61 and Bakker and Bridge [2006]
inter alia
). The species is the most common taxonomic unit of biodiversity. Approxi-
mately 1.4 million species have been identifi ed, but the actual number is likely
between 10 and 100 million. Subspecifi c units (e.g., genetic- and population-levels)
and multi-specifi c ecological groupings (e.g., guild-, habitat- and ecosystem-levels)
are also integral to biodiversity. Taxonomic treatments of biodiversity are increas-
ingly dependent upon genetic analysis and genome-based assessments, albeit not
without sharp debate (Greene, 2005). The genetic-level emphasis has spawned the
growth of bioinformatics. This young fi eld, which is the fusion of computational
structures and organised biological information, has become an integral part of the
taxonomic advances applied to biodiversity. One example is the new model linking
the genomics and taxonomy of the plant family Solanaceae (the 'nightshade' family)
with the support of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventories initiative of the US
National Science Foundation (NSF) (Knapp et al., 2004; see also Soberon, 1999;
Graham et al., 2004; Blakey et al., 2007). In general, bioinformatics draws upon a
new geographical and spatial emphasis as discussed below (see pages 54 -56).
Ecology and evolution offer a second and equally prominent view within the
biological sciences that are being applied to biodiversity. The ecological and evolu-
tionary sciences are concerned with the processes, functions, and spatial patterns
that support the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity across a variety of scales
from local and regional to global (Wilson, 1988; Nabhan, 1995; Reid, 1997; Ehrlich
and Levin, 1998). Geographical and spatial analysis has gained a growing centrality
in the application of these sciences to biodiversity. In the fi eld of evolution and
bioinformatics, for example, one recent editorial is entitled 'putting the geography
into phylogeography' (Kidd and Ritchie, 2006; see also Moritz, 2002). Similar to
the taxonomic approaches, ecology now relies more heavily on genetic and genomic-
level analysis in the treatment of biodiversity. Ecology also involves an increased
geographical and spatial emphasis. This shift is evident in the approaches of land-
scape genetics and conservation genetics, discussed further below (see pages 54-56),
which are new pillars of biodiversity science. Pioneering contributions, ranging from
biogeography and landscape ecology to conservation biology, are driving this shift
that now marks more than one decade of advances (e.g., Jelinski, 1997; Manel
et al., 2003; Parker and Jorgensen, 2003; Rigg, 2003)
Environmentalism, broadly conceived, provides a second perspective on biodi-
versity and one that is inextricably entwined with the biological, ecological, and
evolutionary sciences. Escalated environmentalist concerns have been fueled by the
