Biodiversity is the variety of all living things; the different plants, animals and micro organisms, the genetic information they contain and the ecosystems they form. Biodiversity is usually explored at three levels - genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity. These three levels work together to create the complexity of life on Earth.

Join the trail and discover the variety of life in our city.

The Australian Museum's Chadwick Biodiversity Fellowship provides an exciting opportunity for a recent PhD graduate to establish a career in biodiversity research. This one year appointment enables the recipient to apply for grants and publish articles as well as network and collaborate with senior research scientists at the Australian Museum and other experts in the field.

Applications for funding for the year commencing July 2010 close on 30 April 2010.

Help celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity 2010. Visit the website and get involved.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity – established by the United Nations to increase worldwide awareness of biodiversity and its importance, and to engage more people in its conservation.

“Biodiversity” is often defined as the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems. "Biodiversity" was coined as a contraction of "biological diversity" in 1985, but the new term arguably has taken on a meaning and import all its own. A symposium in 1986, and the follow-up book BioDiversity (Wilson 1988), edited by biologist E. O. Wilson, heralded the popularity of this concept. Ten years later, Takacs (1996, p.39) described its ascent this way: "in 1988, biodiversity did not appear as a keyword in Biological Abstracts, and biological diversity appeared once. In 1993, biodiversity appeared seventy-two times, and biological diversity nineteen times". Fifteen years further on, it would be hard to count how many times "biodiversity" is used every day by scientists, policy-makers, and others. The global importance of biodiversity now is reflected in the widely accepted target to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity by the year 2010.

Jenkins' essay on "prospects for biodiversity" (Science, State of the Planet, 14 Nov. 2003) explains why we can expect a deepening biodiversity crisis - and why, apparently, this crisis doesn't matter much for human well-being. Resource needs, ecosystem services, perceived functions, and so on arguably are well provided for by (typically) low diversity anthropogenic lands, while "intact" lands arguably have few demonstrable benefits. This provocative "how much does it matter" analysis is not just a follow-on to the essay's discussion of biodiversity's prospects. It raises important issues itself about those prospects - both in what it includes and what it leaves out.

An innovative approach to the 2010 biodiversity target, already being explored by Australian workers (Faith and Ferrier, 2005; Faith, 2005; Williams et al, 2006), proposes that take-up of systematic conservation planning (SCP) in a region can imply a shift to reduced rate of loss of biodiversity.

You can help to conserve Australia's biodiversity. Through living in a sustainable way at home and at work and by joining community groups every individual can make a difference.

How can we come up with a global report card for overall biodiversity when so many species are still unknown to science?