Skip to main content

Biodiversity at Risk Today's Choices Matter (2022) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

1 WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY?
Pages 3-6

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 3...
... Even so, they developed a dizzying array of strategies for survival, feasting on sunlight or chemicals -- and expelling oxygen into the atmosphere that set the stage for all of us to be breathing right now -- as they bobbed or swam through the ocean. The emergence of multicellular organisms fueled an explosion of life forms, eventually bringing forth plants, fungi, and animals that colonized the land and adapted to its every nook and cranny.5 Over many millions of years, Earth's biodiversity has seen major waves of expansion and extinction,6 with countless species from skittering crustaceans to lumbering dinosaurs arising and disappearing.
Read the entire page →
From page 4...
... Ecosystems -- networks of organisms that function together with their physical environment -- burst with life in every spot on Earth, from deep ocean trenches to soaring mountain peaks. In your own body dwell trillions of microbes that help you digest food and fend off disease-causing pathogens.7 Along shorelines, vast underwater meadows of seagrass offer shelter and nursery grounds for countless marine animals, including the dugong, or "sea cows," that serenely graze upon them.8 In desert oases, rare and remote species quench their thirst9 underneath ancient rock paintings depicting the life that thrived there thousands of years ago.
Read the entire page →
From page 5...
... Many Indigenous people emphasize the intrinsic value of all life; some have devised rituals and taboos that preserve natural sites and the biodiversity they contain. U'wa communities in Colombia, for example, follow strict rules, including taking only fallen fruit, never cutting some trees, hunting certain animals at precise times of the year, and allowing only shamans to enter sacred areas.14 In addition, major world religions hold tenets that humanity is not separate from nature, and therefore must protect it.
Read the entire page →
From page 6...
... species named so far18 7–18 million estimated species yet to (* does not include bacteria)
Read the entire page →

Key Terms

  • individual organisms
  • landscape scale
  • physical environment
  • disconnected individual
  • major world

  • seen major
  • remote species
  • countless species
  • countless marine
  • genetic information

  • lumbering dinosaurs
  • taking stock
  • forth plants
  • effects throughout
  • lightfoot crab

  • devised rituals
  • life forms
  • complex dynamics
  • mountain peaks
  • sally lightfoot

  • cultural icon
  • help reveal
  • enter sacred
  • big role
  • wolf populations

  • marsh mud
  • world religions
  • declined precipitously
  • genetic similarities
  • hold tenets


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
    More information on Chapter Skim is available.