Wherever you may live in South Africa you share your environment with thousands of different types of plants and animals. Scientist use the word biodiversity to describe all the different living things on earth.
Biodiversity
Q: What is biodiversity?
A: The different forms of life that can best survive the variety of conditions found on earth. It includes all organisms’ great and small that exist today or have ever existed on our planet, from amoebas to elephants. The basic unit of biodiversity is a species.
Living organisms are divided into the following groups: Fungi, plants, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds. There are still many organisms that have not been discovered. Smaller organisms are much more plentiful than large animals.
Different organisms are special adapted to survive in their environment. For example , Table Mountain in the Western Cape has the same number of plant types as there are in the whole of Britain.
