Measuring Biodiversity

(b) Measuring biodiversity. Measurable components of biodiversity include genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity.
(i) The number and frequency of alleles in a population as a measure of genetic diversity. Genetic diversity comprises the genetic variation represented by the number and frequency of all the alleles in a population.
(ii) Species diversity comprises the number of different species in an ecosystem (the species richness) and the proportion of each species in the ecosystem (the relative abundance). The effects of degree of isolation and area of habitat islands on their species diversity.
(iii) Ecosystem diversity refers to the number of distinct ecosystems within a defined area.