What is biodiversity?
Species Diversity
Species diversity is the variety of species within a habitat or a region. Some habitats, such as rainforests and coral reefs, have many species. Others, such as salt flats or a polluted stream, have fewer.
In Australia, more than 80% of plant and animal species are endemic, which means that they only occur naturally in Australia.
Species are grouped together into families according to shared characteristics. In Australia, it is not just the individual species that are endemic - whole families of animals and plants are endemic. Seven families of mammals, four of birds and twelve of flowering plants are endemic to Australia. No other country has as many endemic flowering plant families as Australia.
Invertebrates - animals without backbones - make up about 99% of all animal species, and most of these are insects. Invertebrates include crabs, snails, worms, corals and seastars, as well as insects, such as beetles and flies. Insects fill many vital roles in ecosystems as pollinators, recyclers of nutrients, scavengers and food for others.
While we may mostly notice mammals, they actually make up less than 1% of all animal species.
Fact sheets
- Endemism
- Speciation
- Mountain tops and biodiversity
- The Australian Mallee moths
- Lizards - how they evolved and lost their limbs
- Platypus
- Endemism in Australian mammals
- Genus Ctenotus: the largest group of lizards in Australia
- Australian goannas - first in, best dressed
- Eucalypts
- Fishes from Australia's temperate marine shore
- The plants in Australia called Proteaceae
- Mantis shrimp - colourful and aggressive
- Adaptive radiation: why most animals are insects
- Phreatoicidean Isopods
- Arthropods - a biological history
