What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity in Australia
As a 'developed' nation, Australia has a special responsibility for biodiversity conservation and management.
It is estimated that there are 13.6 million species of plants, animals and micro-organisms on earth. Australia has about one million of these, which represents more than 7% of the world's total and is more than twice the number of species in Europe and North America combined. Megadiversity describes countries with very high levels of biodiversity. Twelve of the megadiverse countries, including Australia, contain about 75% of Earth's total biodiversity. As a 'developed' nation, Australia has a special responsibility for biodiversity conservation and management. Other megadiverse countries include Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Gondwana
Australia's high number of endemic species (that is, they only occur naturally in Australia) is largely a result of its long period of separation from other continents. Australia was once part of the great southern supercontinent Gondwana, which also included South America, Africa, India and Antarctica. Gondwana began to break up some 140 million years ago and about 50 million years ago, Australia eventually split from Antarctica. Australia's unique biodiversity is mostly explained by the isolation of our continent from other land masses.
