Concept Of Biodiversity Research Articles

Finnish primary school student teachers’ systems thinking regarding sustainability in connection with reproduction, biodiversity and sustainable development

Systems thinking is considered an important skill when teaching biology and sustainable development in the 21st century. The key to understanding biodiversity and thus sustainability in biology is understanding reproduction as a phenomenon. The aim of this study is to analyse student teachers’ systems thinking levels regarding sustainability in connection with reproduction, biodiversity and sustainable development. Second-year primary school student teachers from one Finnish university (N = 174) participated in a questionnaire, and their open-ended answers were categorized using content analysis. The results indicate that most of the student teachers had a relatively low level of systems thinking concerning sustainable development and its relation to the concepts of biodiversity and reproduction. The study also showed that student teachers with higher interest towards biology had a more sophisticated level of systems thinking. For developing sustainability understanding, teaching focusing on the specific systems thinking skills concerning processing and understanding of wholes is crucial.

On the Importance of Contextualizing an Educational Escape Room Activity

This paper describes the design and evaluation of "Enigma Bio", an educational escape room activity that aims to convey the abstract concept of biodiversity to children between 11 and 13 years of age, making them aware of the importance of climate change and its impact on biodiversity. The design of Enigma Bio is closely linked to the Biodiversity exhibition at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, designed for a visit in groups of between 20 and 30 children, with an approximate duration of one hour, running on mobile devices and including augmented reality technology. The purpose of this research is to determine whether, in the case of educational escape room activities in museums with a limited time duration, it is more effective to have a pre-session introducing the topic. Our hypothesis is that without the context of the pre-explanation, the playful component of the game may be too powerful and may cause children not to pay enough attention to the message that the game intends to communicate, and even more so when dealing with a complex message such as the effect of climate change on biodiversity. To answer this research question, we follow an A/B testing experimental design involving two groups of children, one of which received an introductory talk on biodiversity and climate change before going to the museum and the other did not. The experimental design is completed with a pre-post evaluation of the children's environmental awareness by means of a previously validated questionnaire. The results of the experiment provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the pre-session introduction in enhancing the learning outcomes of short educational escape room activities. Significant differences were observed between pre- and post-activity tests, indicating a moderate overall increase in awareness scores within both individual groups (A and B) as well as across the combined results. The findings suggest that the pre-session introduction indeed plays a role in enhancing students' awareness of the targeted message. These results represent a breakthrough in the e-learning practice that will be of value to other designers of educational escape rooms with a limited time duration.

Development of Flipped Classroom Based Interactive Multimedia on Biodiversity Concept to Increase Students' Learning Motivation and Critical Thinking

Students' critical thinking skills are essential in 21st-century education. Certain students show a lack of enthusiasm for learning and have limited critical thinking skills. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of interactive multimedia in a flipped classroom setting on understanding biodiversity, with a particular focus on increasing learning motivation and critical thinking skills. The research employed a quasi-experimental method known as the nonequivalent control group design. Collecting samples using the cluster random sampling technique. The collection instruments include interviews, student needs questionnaires, validation questionnaires from media and material experts, learning objectives and teaching module flow questionnaires, teacher and student response questionnaires, learning motivation questionnaires, and critical thinking tests. Data analysis comes in a variety of forms, including initial study data analysis, feasible information analysis, practical information analysis, and effective information analysis. Feasibility has a score of 90.3% (very feasible), and practicality has a score of 91.2% (very practical). As well as the effectiveness of learning motivation with a sig. (2-tailed) of 0.000 0.05 and an N-Gain of 0.764 (high), besides critical thinking with a sig. (2-tailed) of 0.047 0.05 and an N-Gain of 0.706 (high). The research results show that interactive multimedia that utilizes the flipped classroom method is feasible, practical, and successful in increasing learning motivation and critical thinking skills. However, this interactive multimedia has only been implemented at senior high school 4 Muara Teweh, so it needs to be expanded to other schools and developed with other concepts

Unsupervised literature mining approaches for extracting relationships pertaining to habitats and reproductive conditions of plant species

IntroductionFine-grained, descriptive information on habitats and reproductive conditions of plant species are crucial in forest restoration and rehabilitation efforts. Precise timing of fruit collection and knowledge of species' habitat preferences and reproductive status are necessary especially for tropical plant species that have short-lived recalcitrant seeds, and those that exhibit complex reproductive patterns, e.g., species with supra-annual mass flowering events that may occur in irregular intervals. Understanding plant regeneration in the way of planning for effective reforestation can be aided by providing access to structured information, e.g., in knowledge bases, that spans years if not decades as well as covering a wide range of geographic locations. The content of such a resource can be enriched with literature-derived information on species' time-sensitive reproductive conditions and location-specific habitats.MethodsWe sought to develop unsupervised approaches to extract relationships pertaining to habitats and their locations, and reproductive conditions of plant species and corresponding temporal information. Firstly, we handcrafted rules for a traditional rule-based pattern matching approach. We then developed a relation extraction approach building upon transformer models, i.e., the Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer (T5), casting the relation extraction problem as a question answering and natural language inference task. We then propose a novel unsupervised hybrid approach that combines our rule-based and transformer-based approaches.ResultsEvaluation of our hybrid approach on an annotated corpus of biodiversity-focused documents demonstrated an improvement of up to 15 percentage points in recall and best performance over solely rule-based and transformer-based methods with F1-scores ranging from 89.61 to 96.75% for reproductive condition - temporal expression relations, and ranging from 85.39% to 89.90% for habitat - geographic location relations. Our work shows that even without training models on any domain-specific labeled dataset, we are able to extract relationships between biodiversity concepts from literature with satisfactory performance.

Implementing the Integrated GREEN Model for Social Natural Science Project (IPAS) to Enhance Understanding of Sustainable Biodiversity Concepts in Schools

This research implements the Garden Resources, Education, and Environment Nexus (GREEN) Model as an innovative learning strategy to enhance the sustainable understanding of biodiversity concepts through Project-Based Learning (PjBL) Science and Social Science (IPAS) subject in schools. This PjBL model aims to integrate the GREEN Model into PjBL IPAS to enhance students' understanding of biodiversity concepts at the Indonesian School in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. The research employs an experimental method with a ODGE using PjBL in IPAS subjects, the sample 34 students 10th. Research instruments and data collected included a 14-item short-answer pretest-posttest, a 8-item Likert Scale questionnaires, and interview guidelines and analyzed using descriptive statistical methods. The research results indicate that the implementation of the integrated GREEN Model in PjBL IPAS can improve students' understanding of biodiversity concepts, increasing the average score from 64.85 to 83.41 with a sig (2- tailed = 0.034) < (0.05). Based on statistical analysis, the integrated GREEN Model with PiBL in subject IPAS significantly enhance students' understanding concepts of biodiversity knowledge. According to the survey and interview data processing, most students also responded positively to the learning process, finding the GREEN Model engaging and easy to understand when integrated with PjBL IPAS.

Anthropogenic vs. natural habitats: Higher microbial biodiversity pays the trade-off of lower connectivity

Climate change and anthropogenic disturbances are known to influence soil biodiversity. The objectives of this study were to compare the community composition, species coexistence patterns, and ecological assembly processes of soil microbial communities in a paired setting featuring a natural and an anthropogenic ecosystem facing each other at identical climatic, pedological, and vegetational conditions. A transect gradient from forest to seashore allowed for sampling across different habitats within both sites. The field survey was carried out at two adjacent strips of land within the Po River delta lagoon system (Veneto, Italy) one of which is protected within a natural preserve and the other has been converted for decades into a tourist resort. The anthropogenic pressure interestingly led to an increase in the α-diversity of soil microbes but was accompanied by a reduction in β-diversity. The community assembly mechanisms of microbial communities differentiate in natural and anthropic ecosystems: for bacteria, in natural ecosystems deterministic variables and homogeneous selection play a main role (51.92%), while stochastic dispersal limitation (52.15%) is critical in anthropized ecosystems; for fungi, stochastic dispersal limitation increases from 38.1% to 66.09% passing from natural to anthropized ecosystems. We are on calcareous sandy soils and in more natural ecosystems a variation of topsoil pH favors the deterministic selection of bacterial communities, while a divergence of K availability favors stochastic selection. In more anthropized ecosystems, the deterministic variable selection is influenced by the values of SOC. Microbial networks in the natural system exhibited higher numbers of nodes and network edges, as well as higher averages of path length, weighted degree, clustering coefficient, and density than its equivalent sites in the more anthropically impacted environment. The latter on the other hand presented a stronger modularity. Although the influence of stochastic processes increases in anthropized habitats, niche-based selection also proves to impose constraints on communities. Overall, the functionality of the relationships between groups of microorganisms co-existing in communities appeared more relevant to the concept of functional biodiversity in comparison to the plain number of their different taxa. Fewer but functionally more organized lineages displayed traits underscoring a better use of the resources than higher absolute numbers of taxa when those are not equally interconnected in their habitat exploitation. However, considering that network complexity can have important implications for microbial stability and ecosystem multifunctionality, the extinction of complex ecological interactions in anthropogenic habitats may impair important ecosystem services that soils provide us.

Exploring Student Representations of Biodiversity in Science Education in Morocco: A Didactic Perspective

<p style="text-align: justify;">In teaching, students' representations could constitute an obstacle to the construction of scientific knowledge and are often considered stable cognitive structures whose organization is sought to be inferred through questionnaires and interviews. This study aims at identifying and analyzing high school students’ representations related to the concept of biodiversity. To meet this objective, a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire were used to collect data. 202 Moroccan students participated in this survey (46.5% from rural areas and 53.5% from urban areas of the "Direction Provinciale" of education of Guelmim city in Morocco). The results of the interview indicated that only 1.82% of the students gave a definition that consists of the three biodiversity dimensions, namely the species, the ecosystems, and the genetic diversity. The questionnaire results revealed a low to medium correlation between their representations and their acquired knowledge related to the concept of biodiversity dealt with in Moroccan school programs (from the discipline of "scientific activity" in the primary cycle and that of "life and earth sciences" in the secondary cycle). The results further indicated a low presence of supervised activities related to biodiversity within the school and therefore a low degree of influence on the students' representations. It was concluded that there was no effective transmission or adequate assimilation of the concept of biodiversity among the students surveyed.</p>

Pop-up book of bajakah plant (Spatholobus littoralis) inventory results as learning media on biodiversity concept: A feasibility analysis

This research aims to analyze the feasibility of a pop-up book regarding the results of an inventory of Bajakah plants as a learning medium on biodiversity concepts. This research is descriptive. The research instrument used was the pop-up book media validation sheet, consisting of three aspects: consistency, format, and attractiveness. The pop-up book media was validated by five validators consisting of two Biology Education lecturers and three Biology teachers for 10th grade of senior high school. Data analysis was performed using Content Validity Ratio (CVR) analysis and Content Validity Index (CVI) analysis. The pop-up book media validation analysis results obtained a CVR of 0,99 and a CVI of 0,99. The value obtained is classified as valid so that the pop-up book can be declared feasible as a learning medium. This pop-up book can be used in learning biodiversity concepts for 10th grade of senior high school.

Conservation Value of Gunungan Wayang Kulit Purwa for Science Learning Materials

This study aims to explore the concepts of ecology and biodiversity, the value of environmental preservation in gunungan wayang kulit purwa, and its correlation to science learning or environmental education in a science subject at the junior high school level to increase environmental awareness. This research employed a qualitative descriptive approach. This research included ethnographic research associated with symbolic interpretation in anthropology. The informants of this study were a puppeteer (dalang), a javanology expert, a gunungan wayang kulit purwa creator, and a biodiversity expert chosen by purposive sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, literature reviews, and content analysis. Data triangulation was applied to ensure the data validity. The data were analyzed using a spiral analysis model, including managing, reading, marking, describing, classifying, interpreting, and visualizing data continuously. The study results show that the gunungan wayang kulit purwa contains the conservation value and concept of ecology and biodiversity. This concept has a correlation with the material on ecology and biodiversity in the independent curriculum in a science subject at schools. The ecological concept includes biotic and abiotic components, symbiosis, pollinators and predators, food chains, food webs, competition, and the value of environmental preservation. The findings in the form of a link between ecological concepts and biodiversity in the gunungan wayang kulit purwa have implications for the potential use of gunungan wayang kulit purwa as a learning resource for science education in schools or environmental education to increase environmental awareness of the young generation.

Teaching Biodiversity: Towards a Sustainable and Engaged Education

The preservation of biodiversity has become a major concern in contemporary society. It is essential to understand teachers’ representations of biodiversity to effectively guide educational efforts because of the significant role of education in raising awareness and promoting sustainable behavior. Through a survey of a sample of 118 teachers, we adopted a mixed-method approach combining both a closed questionnaire and interviews. We used these methods to explore teachers’ representations of the concept of biodiversity as an integral part of the school curriculum, as well as to gather their views on certain features of its teaching. The results state that the majority of teachers perceive biodiversity as a whole and in its most complex relationships. During their professional experience, they have developed a biocentric and anthropocentric conception of biodiversity. This study provides valuable information to guide future pedagogical practices and educational policies in sustainable education.

The development of rubi web (rumah biologi web) in biodiversity concept

This study aims to develop a web-based learning media, namely RUBI WEB (Rumah Biologi Web) in the concept of biodiversity. The research method used in this research is a modified development research method from Borg & Gall (2003) whose stages consist of information gathering, planning, product development, and initial field trials. Aspects of the assessment of the material assessed include aspects of material and aspects of language, then aspects of media assessment that are assessed include aspects of software engineering, aspects of instructional design, and aspects of visual communication. The results of the material feasibility test by material experts obtained a percentage value of 80% and media feasibility tests by media experts obtained a percentage value of 83.4%. The results of the user response test by students obtained a percentage value of 86. Therefore, it can be interpreted that the RUBI WEB website learning media in the concept of biodiversity is included in the grade A+ category with a range of percentile ratings between 96-100%, best imaginable adjectives category, acceptable level of acceptance, and NPS (Net Promotore Score) in class promoter, i.e. users are satisfied and loyal to RUBI WEB media, so that they can make users want to recommend this media to others

Twitter Mining for Detecting Interest Trends on Biodiversity: Messages from Seven Language Communities

The recent rates of global change in nature are unprecedented in human history. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has proposed a framework to achieve transformative change. Transformative change with respect to nature will be driven by recognizing the values people have; making inclusive decisions based on these values; restructuring policies, rights, and regulations in accordance with them; and transforming social norms and goals that can drive change. Social media is a new source of information and a modern tool for monitoring public opinion on human–nature interactions. This study identified commonalities among seven language communities (the six official languages of the United Nations and the Japanese language), demonstrating the uniqueness of the Japanese community by comparing hashtags in tweets that include the term biodiversity and determining differences in interest and concern about biodiversity from the past to the present. Tweets accessible at the end of 2021 that focus on biodiversity were collected from the Twitter server and used to form a text dataset. Interest was then qualitatively and quantitatively identified using natural language processing technology. Engagements and diversity indices were found to be on the rise in all language communities. We found that the Japanese language community has a different perspective on the relationship between biodiversity and humans from the scope of the IPBES conceptual framework. Future work should examine the relationship between passion for biodiversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, collaboration with various people around the world is necessary to understand the concept of biodiversity in different traditions and cultures.

Rethinking Cultural and Spiritual Values in Biodiversity Conservation among the Konso People of South-Western Ethiopia

The concept of biodiversity has a strong link with nature and culture. This study aimed to investigate how the Konso people of southwestern Ethiopia use cultural and spiritual values to conserve biodiversity. The study took place between January to April 2019 and March to July of 2021. Data were gathered using: focus group discussions (9 FGDs), in-depth interviews (with 26 key informants) and observation. A thematic analysis method was employed for analyzing the data. According to the findings of the study, the people of Konso have traditions of using dinna (holy woodlands) as locations for cultural rituals to relate with nature. The dinna’s survival is dependent on the clan’s leader (poqqola) and the village’s chiefs (shorogotta). Cutting of dinna is strictly forbidden because it is believed to result in punishment by the karroytta (deity of dead ancestors). In the Konso culture, cutting the whole shelkata (Moringa stenopetala) tree at once is considered as taboo since it is believed that it brought famine to the society. The investigations also found out that modernization and religious organizations have deterred contemporary cultural and spiritual values of biodiversity conservation methods. As a result, collaboration among researchers and policymakers is a critical suggestion for sustaining and integrating traditional forest management techniques with modern forest conservation measures.

Conservation of animal genetic resources in the world and its enlightenment to China.

Animal genetic resources in the world are rich and varied. Local species have strong adaptability to the local environment. They are precious resources, and need to be protected by the whole world. In this paper, we summarize the current situation of conservation activities of livestock and poultry resources abroad, including the relevant policies and measures, financial support, genetic material conservation, research projects, and the benefits of conservation animal genetic resources. The actions of conservation of animal genetic resources reflects the increasing recognition of the importance of biodiversity by people around the world. The variety of conservation activities of genetic materials in the world and its benefits reflect that the concept of biodiversity has already been accepted by public and the government. Conservation of animal genetic resources is the primary action for the revitalization of Chinese seed industry. This paper has enlightenment significance for strengthening the conservation of animal genetic resources in China.

An initial ecological characterization of mesopelagic fauna at Johnston Atoll and Musicians Seamounts

The mesopelagic region (200–1000 m) hosts a wide variety of organisms in a concentrated layer known as the deep scattering layer (DSL). Much of the mesopelagic region in the central North Pacific remains unexplored, limiting ecosystem considerations in fisheries management and other applications. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Ocean Exploration and Research used NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer to conduct two expeditions in the region, one to Johnston Atoll and the other to Musicians Seamounts. During these expeditions, a remotely operated vehicle collected video and CTD environmental data while the ship collected active acoustics. This project analyzed the video, CTD, and acoustic data to create an ecological characterization of the mesopelagic at Johnston Atoll and Musicians Seamounts. The initial characterization included a full inventory of mesopelagic fauna imaged, the relationship between the abundance of categorical groups (gelatinous, Chaetognatha, Crustacea, and fish) and the environmental variables of salinity, oxygen, and temperature, a comparison between the abundance of mesopelagic fauna below, within, and above the DSL, and a qualitative analysis of the spatial distribution of categorical groups. There was a significant negative relationship between the abundance of the gelatinous organisms and salinity and oxygen concentrations. Overall, there were more sightings per minute of all organisms combined below and within the DSL than above the DSL at Musicians Seamounts, while there was no difference in sightings per minute between the below, within, and above DSL groups at Johnston Atoll. Proportionally, there were more gelatinous organisms than any other single category (fish, Chaetognatha, and Crustacea) at all dive sites in the study. These initial characterizations strive to develop biodiversity concepts and the relationships between the environment and fauna. Progress in these areas can aid the management of marine national monuments and serve as a baseline for future ROV dives.

Криза концепції біорізноманіття? Глобальні тенденції та погляд з України

The concept of biological diversity (BD) emerged in the early 20th century, and since then the term has been widely used in both scientific and popular science, often as a substitute for the concepts of species richness and species diversity. ‘Biodiversity’ has grown into an extensive scientific concept that underpins the theoretical and practical foundations of nature conservation around the world. However, there are many critics of the concept of biodiversity, in particular because of the lack of unambiguous definitions that would simultaneously include the entire scope and all levels and aspects of the diversity of living matter. As a rule, diversity studies focus on such aspects as ‘rarity’, ‘threatened’, and ‘extinction’, which in practical terms is manifested in the attempt to preserve rare and endangered genetic, taxonomic, and ecological units, while the vast majority of living things are left out. So, is the concept of biodiversity in general in a real crisis, or is there only a crisis of diversity of definitions, that is, the theoretical foundations of this concept, particularly in the light of scientific achievements of the 20th and 21st centuries? In this paper, we examine the conceptual positions on biodiversity and the arguments against their paradigmatic nature and general viability, which were brought to public discussion in the article ‘The case against the concept of biodiversity’ by the well-known researcher and journalist Clare Fieseler, published on the well-known American news and explanatory journalism website Vox (2021). From this article, we have identified seven controversial aspects of the current understanding and perception of the concept of biodiversity. The problems associated with the interpretation of the term ‘biodiversity’, biotic diversity as a dynamic system, current trends in biodiversity research, and the contribution of Ukraine to the development of the concept of biodiversity are also discussed. The ideas of pluralism of biodiversity concepts and the possibility of an updated interpretation of this term are considered. The challenges Ukraine faces in times of a great upheaval, in particular in the context of war and catastrophic destruction of natural complexes, are detailed.

Free word association analysis of German laypeople's perception of biodiversity and its loss.

Due to the dramatic biodiversity crisis, it is crucial to understand how people perceive biodiversity. Knowledge of how thoughts are organized around this concept can identify which ideas are best to focus on biodiversity conservation information campaigns. The primary aim of the present study was to identify social representations of the German public regarding the concept of biodiversity and its loss using a free word association test. Furthermore, unique association networks were analyzed. For this purpose, data collection was performed in September 2021 in Germany using an online questionnaire to assess participants' associations with the prompt "biodiversity" (n = 131) and "biodiversity loss" (n = 130). Additionally, we used the social network software Gephi to create biodiversity (loss) association networks. The five most commonly mentioned associations for biodiversity were "animal," "plant," "nature," "human," and "flower." For biodiversity loss, the five most commonly mentioned associations were "species extinction," "climate change," "plant," "insect," and "bee." Neither "land use change" nor "invasive species," as key drivers of biodiversity loss, were present in social representations of the German public. A difference was observed in the total number of mentioned associations between biodiversity and biodiversity loss. For both, the associations "plant" and "animal" were related. However, participants associated specific taxa only with animals, such as "insects" and "birds." For plants, no specific taxa were named. Based on the network analysis, the most commonly mentioned word pairs for biodiversity and biodiversity loss were "plant - animal" and "species loss - climate change," respectively. Based on our statistical network analysis, these associations were identified as the most central associations with the greatest influence in the network. Thus, they had the most connections and the function of predicting the flow in the network. In sum, the public's multifaceted views on biodiversity and its loss, as well as the aforementioned central associations, hold great potential to be utilized more for the communication and education of biodiversity conservation. In addition, our findings contribute to the scientific community's understanding of social representations and perceptions of biodiversity and its loss.

Survival of the Fittest? A Call for Hospitality to Incorporate Ecology Into Business Practice and Education

Biodiversity and the science that addresses its conservation, loss, and recovery, including conservation biology and restoration ecology, are high on the contemporary global agenda. While the hospitality industry has taken major steps toward net carbon zero and even net positive business, we argue that it has another significant advance to make. The United Nations has dedicated 2021–2030 as the decade of ecosystem restoration, and along with it, several other organizations offer guidance on how businesses should approach the natural environment. Considering the role of hospitality as a consumer of nature, we call for the industry to implement these principles in practice through nature-based solutions and restorative and regenerative hospitality. To strengthen this transformation, we urge hospitality management education to include the basic concepts of ecology, biodiversity, and environmental science, along with their application, in curricula. By doing this, education can advance from presenting sustainability actions as a necessity into illustrating and justifying their need on a planetary scale. The change will facilitate the next step the hospitality industry must take in transforming its relationship with the natural environment.

Towards an Appraisal of Biodiversity in Bangladesh

In this paper, the concept of biodiversity has been presented on a historical perspective keeping the visions on Bangladesh via mentioning the primary supporting climatological and physiographic factors of the ecosystems along with their species composition. The total number of microbes, plant, and animal species has been estimated in the range of 10,606-14,913. The varieties of ecosystems present in Bangladesh belong to the broad categories, namely forest, agro-terrestrial, freshwater aquatic, as well as estuarine and marine. Forests cover nearly 17.5% of the total land of Bangladesh having specific categories like tropical wet evergreen and semi-evergreen, tropical moist deciduous, mangrove, freshwater swamp, and homestead forests. Dominant species belonging to those ecosystems were mentioned. The dimension of crop diversity in Bangladesh is very large, but the most common staple food comes from Oryza sativa, Triticum aestivum and Zea mays. The sources of biodiversity for the supply of vegetable and protein have been highlighted. Unique biodiversity in cases of freshwater phytoplankton and aquatic plants has been provided. Results from a case study on butterfly as their qualitative and quantitative biological population dynamics in 34 forest ecosystems of Bangladesh were presented and discussed. The establishment of an open ‘Butterfly Park’ in a National Park reveals that with due course of time the plant-butterfly-wildlife vertebrate species interaction increases with a concomitant increase in the biodiversity. Dominant plant and animal species together with their status as endemic, endangered, threatened, etc. in variously defined ecosystems of Bangladesh were highlighted. Besides, the ways of biodiversity conservation currently in practice in Bangladesh has been mentioned along with the future plans and programs to be implemented. Bangladesh holds a rich history in the starting of biodiversity teaching via developing curricular activities in different teaching institutions throughout the country. The origin and background of this activity was also highlighted. This review will help researchers to address biodiversity related questions on a scientific perspective. J. Biodivers. Conserv. Bioresour. Manag. 2023, 9(1): 79-100

Environment- and scale-dependent changes in the functioning of invertebrate communities associated with Fucus vesiculosus

The functional trait approach focuses on the diversity of species characteristics, and can reveal much more about community functioning and trophic structure, compared to classical biodiversity concepts. In this study, we assessed large- and small-scale patterns in the functional traits of invertebrate communities associated with the marine macroalga Fucus vesiculosus. Large-scale comparisons were done across coastal areas representing different water quality (good, moderate, and poor) and small-scale comparisons across communities from sites with different exposures (sheltered, exposed) within the areas. Functional richness differed between areas of different water quality, with higher richness generally observed in areas with clearer waters. On a smaller scale, functional richness and dispersion were highest at sheltered sites, whereas the effect of exposure on functional divergence varied between study areas. Community trait composition differed among areas of different water quality with opportunistic traits becoming more prevalent in areas in poorer state. For example, community-weighted body sizes differed between areas and the smallest body sizes were observed in areas with moderate or poor water quality. The results illustrate how faunal traits within the same habitat type can differ geographically and how the functioning of communities may change due to anthropogenic pressures and natural drivers at different scales.