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12: Survey of Bioiversity

  • Page ID
    192827
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    • 12.1: Classification of Biodiversity - Domains and Kingdoms
      Life is classified into three domains. Two of those domains, Bacteria and Archaea, consist of prokaryotic unicellular organisms. All eukaryotic organisms are in the domain Eukarya. Domain Eukarya consists of several kingdoms: Kingdom Animalia, Kingdom Plantae, Kingdom Fungi, and the protists. Protists are no longer viewed as all belonging in one evolutionary kingdom, but for simplicity they are still sometimes referred to as being in the Kingdom Protista.
    • 12.2: Prokaryotic Diversity
      Prokaryotes (domains Archaea and Bacteria) are single-celled organisms lacking a nucleus. They existed for billions of years before plants and animals appeared. Some prokaryotes are beneficial, or even essential, to humans and to the environment.  However, some prokaryotes can cause diseases.
    • 12.3: Eukaryotic Origins
      The origin of eukaryotic cells was largely a mystery until a revolutionary hypothesis was comprehensively examined in the 1960s by Lynn Margulis. The endosymbiotic theory states that eukaryotes are a product of one prokaryotic cell engulfing another, one living within another, and evolving together over time until the separate cells were no longer recognizable as such. This once-revolutionary hypothesis had immediate persuasiveness and is now widely accepted.
    • 12.4: Protists ("Kingdom" Protista)
      Protists are extremely diverse in terms of biological and ecological characteristics due in large part to the fact that they are an artificial assemblage of phylogenetically unrelated groups. Protists display highly varied cell structures, several types of reproductive strategies, virtually every possible type of nutrition, and varied habitats. Most single-celled protists are motile, but these organisms use diverse structures for transportation.
    • 12.5: The Fungi Kingdom (Kingdom Fungi)
      Fungi are eukaryotic heterotrophs. They feed on decaying and dead matter and are important decomposers that release essential elements into the environment. External enzymes digest nutrients that are absorbed by the body of the fungus. A thick cell wall made of chitin surrounds the cell. Fungi can be unicellular as yeasts or develop a network of filaments called a mycelium, often described as mold. Most species multiply by asexual and sexual reproductive cycles.
    • 12.6: The Plant Kingdom (Kingdom Plantae)
      The plant kingdom contains mostly photosynthetic organisms; a few parasitic forms have lost the ability to photosynthesize. They have cell walls containing cellulose and have evolved traits that made it possible to live on land and survive out of water. Plant diversity includes non-vascular plants, seedless vascular plants, and seed plants. The two categories of seed plants are gymnosperms and angiosperms. Most plants reproduce sexually, but they also have diverse methods of asexual reproduction
    • 12.7: The Animal Kingdom (Kingdom Animalia)
      Animals constitute a diverse kingdom of organisms. Although animals range in complexity from simple sea sponges to human beings, most members share certain features. Animals are eukaryotic, multicellular, heterotrophic organisms that ingest their food and usually develop into motile creatures with a fixed body plan. Most members of the animal kingdom have differentiated tissues of four main classes—nervous, muscular, connective, and epithelial—that are specialized to perform different functions.
    • 12.E: Survey of Biodiversity (Exercises)

    Thumbnail: Tree of life. (OpenStax).


    This page titled 12: Survey of Bioiversity is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rachel Aptekar.