Hello ,

People often say that they have many insects in their garden or around their house. The question that often comes to my mind when I'm told this, is firstly whether the abundance is accompanied by diversity or not?

An abundance of insects without diversity would mean that there are only a few species around, but a lot of individuals. On the other hand if there is a high diversity there would be a lot of insects from a lot of different species.

Diversity, however, is not so simple. Looking at only species diversity we are missing two other types of diversity that is just as important.

The first is within species diversity or genetic diversity. Simply put this is how different individuals are from one another within a given population.

A Number of different species within a given area is known as species diversity. Most often when scientists talk about diversity they are referring to species diversity as it is the easiest and most clear cut to use.

The last and potentially the most difficult to define in nature is the ecosystem diversity. The differences between ecosystems are often not so clear cut and easy to define, as two ecosystems could look almost identical, but they have completely different species compositions, or maybe even just a single species substitute, which could lead to a different ecosystem all together.

Would you say that you have a, poor or rich, species diversity where you live?

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