Biodiversity

Take out your notebook and list all the organisms you can think of where you live. List people, dogs, cats, fish, birds, and any wild animals that are known to live in your area. Also name insects, reptiles, and amphibians. Include plants, fungi, and microorganism species. Before long, your list will contain a HUGE variety of organisms!

Biodiversity is the word we use to describe the amazing variety of life on Earth. "Bio" means life, and "diversity" means variety. Having biodiversity is extremely important because living things depend on each other.

At the moment, scientists have named nearly 2 million species, and they believe that there are many millions more yet to be discovered. About half of those are insects. That's a lot of insects! There are at least 20,000 butterfly species alone.