Suppose you were picked up from your classroom and dropped in the middle of a rainforest. What do you imagine you’d see? Look up, and you’d see tall trees entwined with creeping vines and flowers, and snakes slithering along branches in pursuit of a frog or bird. Look down, and you might spot some insects scurrying along the forest floor, or even see some fungi growing out of an old log. No matter which direction you turned, you’d see a new type of organism. Earth is teeming with living things, and this variety of life is called biodiversity. The term comes from the combination of “bio”, which means “life” and “diversity”, which means “different types”.

Biodiversity refers to all the different types of organisms on Earth, including plants, fungi, bacteria and animals. It also refers to the diversity of ecosystems on Earth, such as deserts, forests, oceans, tundras, or even cities. Biodiversity can also mean the diversity of genes within a species. This is called genetic diversity. For example, dogs are all the same species, Canis canis, but each breed of dog looks unique because their genes differ. Biodiversity is one of the most critical parts of life on Earth, and when biodiversity is threatened, humans are at risk, too.

One of the most important benefits of biodiversity is that it provides resiliency, or the ability to bounce back from misfortune or change. Suppose you were asked to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks that could support the weight of a book. If you use just a few sticks to construct the bridge, it would barely support the book. What would happen if you pulled one of the popsicle sticks off the bridge? The bridge would collapse. Now, suppose you strengthened your bridge with many, many other sticks. You could pull one, or even ten sticks off the bridge and it would still support the weight of the book. The strength of the bridge was in the large number of popsicle sticks that supported it.

Biodiversity works in a similar way. Having many different types of organisms provides Earth’s ecosystems and food webs with a kind of safety net. Consider this: If a species of deer can eat many types of plants for food, and the forest is full of those plants, then the deer has a good chance of survival. If several of those plants go extinct, and only one type of plant remains, it’s more likely that the deer will have problems surviving. This is one reason why protecting and conserving biodiversity is so important. In a way, the health of our planet depends on having options.

Humans benefit from biodiversity in many ways. Do you like to eat? The food on your plate wouldn’t be possible without Earth’s many plants, animals, and fungi. Do you use a pencil at school or sit at a wooden desk or chair? If so, thank the many types of trees that provide us with paper products and wood. Have you ever taken penicillin or aspirin? You can thank Earth’s fungi and plants - they provide the materials for many types of helpful and life saving medicines. Did you use electricity today? If your electricity is supplied by a power plant, you can thank the organisms that died millions of years ago and provided us with fossil fuels. And perhaps most importantly, did you breathe in and out today? You could not have done so without plants, algae and some types of bacteria that constantly pump oxygen into the atmosphere.

Biodiversity contributes to the health of our planet and is critical to human lives. Explore a variety of locations around the world to learn more about biodiversity. Examine examples of biodiversity in unexpected places, investigate how scientists restore and promote biodiversity, and study the role of biodiversity in your life.