List the main threats to biodiversity worldwide.

Name: Problem 1, Chapter 40: Biology: Concepts and Investigations
Uploaded: 2020-05-20T18:43:54-08:00
Duration: 10 min 14 s
Channel: Breanna Kloczkowski
Description: List the main threats to biodiversity worldwide.

Key Concepts

Biodiversity

Biodiversity refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth, including the different species, their genes, and the ecosystems they form. It is essential for ecosystem productivity, resilience, and the overall health of the planet.

Habitat Loss and Fragmentation

Habitat loss entails the destruction or significant alteration of the natural environments that species depend on for survival, often driven by urbanization, agriculture, and deforestation. Habitat fragmentation divides continuous habitats into smaller, isolated patches, which can reduce species' ability to migrate, breed, and maintain genetic diversity.

Climate Change

Climate change involves significant alterations in weather patterns and long-term environmental conditions, largely due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. These changes affect species distribution, ecosystem dynamics, and the timing of biological events, ultimately threatening biodiversity.

Overexploitation

Overexploitation occurs when species are harvested at rates exceeding their capacity for recovery. This unsustainable use of natural resources — including overfishing, excessive logging, and illegal wildlife trade — can lead to severe population declines and even extinction.

Pollution

Pollution refers to the introduction of harmful substances or energy into the environment, which degrades habitats and disrupts ecological balance. Chemical, plastic, and noise pollution can have toxic effects on both terrestrial and aquatic species, undermining biodiversity.

Invasive Species

Invasive species are non-native organisms that spread rapidly in new environments, often outcompeting, preying on, or transmitting diseases to the native species. Their introduction can significantly alter ecosystem functions and reduce biodiversity.

Transcript

00:01 Hey guys, so to answer this question, i'm going to go through some of the main threats to biodiversity and just give a little more information about each one and maybe some examples.

00:11 So the first threat to biodiversity i'll talk about is habitat destruction.

00:23 So this one's pretty obvious.

00:25 If we're destroying a habitat that an organism lives in, then it will either make it really more difficult for that organism to survive.

00:33 And it can make it impossible for that species to survive in that population and it can also just shorten the lifespans and make it more difficult for them to have offspring.

00:52 And one example of this would be the need for palm oil.

00:58 A lot of the things that we use, especially beauty products and foods contain palm oil.

01:02 It's a really just multi -faceted product but it is the process of obtaining palm oil destroys a lot of rainforest and can be really detrimental to a lot of the organisms that live in those populations and those ecosystems.

01:21 So the second threat is global climate change.

01:34 So just two clarifications with this one.

01:38 We're talking about climate.

01:40 It is different from weather.

01:42 Whether it's like, which is.

01:44 You experience on a day -to -day basis.

01:47 So asking if i need a jacket to go outside today is weather.

01:54 Climate is long -term and it is what the weather is like over a long period of time and kind of like an average.

02:05 So asking if i need a jacket when i travel to florida is climate.

02:10 And then the second clarification is global climate change is not just global warming.

02:15 It also consists of weather patterns that are getting a lot more extreme.

02:21 So hotter summers, colder winters, more extreme climate events, and more natural disasters are also part of global climate change.

02:31 And obviously all these things can affect organisms living in any ecosystem that's affected by global climate change because these organisms have adapted to living in a certain climate, a certain, with certain weather patterns, and that's just going to change.

02:50 It can also change the things like ice caps and those kind of things that are in an ecosystem.

02:58 So it just basically, these organisms have adapted to living in a certain ecosystem.

03:04 And if that's no longer the ecosystem that is available to them, it can be really detrimental.

03:09 They can die off.

03:09 They can have shortened lifespans, et cetera.

03:11 So that is a huge threat to biodiversity.

03:20 And then the next example is habitat fragmentation, which is essentially there's a large habitat and then some human activity reduces the ability of that habitat to support species.

03:44 So it could be that we are putting in pavement, sidewalks, those kind of things.

03:51 It could be that we're dividing a habitat into because we are putting in a highway or a strip mall or it could be that we are industrializing a habitat.

04:01 And so it's just no longer supportive of most of the organisms that live there originally.

04:09 So habitat fragmentation obviously just takes away the natural resources and those kind of things in an area and can reduce just the number of organisms that can live there.

04:22 Because if we're putting a huge strip mall in a forest, then that just is less room physically for those organisms to live.

04:31 But it also can just take away because there may be a road in the middle of a habitat and those kind of things that can cause organisms to have problems living there...

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