Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of living nature.
Since 1986, the term and concept have gained wide use among biologists, environmentalists, political leaders and informed citizens around the world. This use coincided with the growing concern about extinction, observed in the last decades of the 20th century. It can be defined as the variety and variability between living organisms and the ecological complexities in which they occur. It can be understood as an association of several hierarchical components: ecosystem, community, species, populations and genes in a defined area. Biodiversity varies with different ecological regions, being greater in tropical regions than in temperate climates.
