1 Biodiversity: an introduction
Watch the following in which the session is introduced.
Transcript: Video 1 Thinking about biodiversity
In this session, you will learn about the diversity of species typically found in floodplain meadows, why the mix of species varies over space and time and how that diversity makes a system more resilient.
All living things are part of a food web with the energy to sustain them usually coming from plants. Where there is a high diversity of plants, there tends to be a high diversity of other living things as well, whether it is fungi, animals or bacteria.
A species is a population of individuals that share many characters and can breed with one another. A species of plant will have adapted itself to a particular niche (a place where it can grow and reproduce.) In a floodplain meadow, the niche may be a moist soil, where hay is made regularly.