Biodiversity

What is Biodiversity?

Biodiversity refers to the immense variety of forms of life that inhabit and have inhabited the different marine and terrestrial environments of our planet throughout the course of history. We can observe this vast diversity of organisms on all scales: the microscopic diversity found in soil and water, and in genes and molecules, the diversity of characteristics of organisms within each species, the diversity of species themselves and the diversity of interactions between them and their environments, all the way to the diversity of entire ecosystems and landscapes visible within a region or country.

At the IEB we study the many different components of our national biodiversity in order to get to know them, understand their responses to environmental change, identify how their constituent ecosystems operate, and share this knowledge so that everyone in Chile can learn to appreciate and look after them.