1. | Biodiversity is the term popularised by the sociobiologist Edward Wilson to describe the combined diversity at all levels of biological organisation. |
2. | IUCN stands for International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural resources. |
3. | Robert May places the global species diversity in the range of 20 to 50 million. |
4. | More than 25 percent of the drugs currently sold in the market are derived from the plants. |
Assertion (A): | Biologists make a statistical comparison of the temperate-tropical species richness of an exhaustively studied group of insects and extrapolate this richness to other group of animals and plants and come up with a gross estimate of the total number of species on earth. |
Reason (R): | Insects are the most successful living organisms among animals and plants. |
1. | Both (A) and (R) are True but (R) does not explain (A). |
2. | (A) is True but (R) is False. |
3. | (A) is False but (R) is True. |
4. | Both (A) and (R) are True and (R) explains (A). |
I | Narrowly utilitarian argument for conserving biodiversity | Humans derive countless direct benefits from nature. |
II. | Broadly utilitarian argument for conserving biodiversity | We owe to millions of plant, animal and microbe species with whom we share this planet |
III. | Ethical argument for conserving biodiversity | Biodiversity plays a major role in many ecosystem services that nature provides |
1. | Location of desert biomes on Earth |
2. | Hotspots of biodiversity |
3. | Sites of major earthquake disasters in the present century |
4. | Places on Earth where the threat to biodiversity is absent |