Chapter 2: Physical Features and Biodiversity

The evolvement, evolution and sustenance of life on earth is the outcome of mutually self-replicated cause and effect of its physical and biological factors. The effects of a minutest activity of a lifeform upon the nature has been theorized by Edward Norton Lorenz (1917-2008), a mathematician and meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who pioneered the ‘Chaos Theory’ and build a mathematical model, aptly named as “The Butterfly Effect”, wherein he propounded that “a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can affect the weather in Central Park”. This theory otherwise speaks that every lifeform, rightly beginning with the microscopic ones has a phenomenally integrated impact on the environment of the earth. The literal meaning of ‘Bio’ is life and ‘diversity’ means variations. So, in general terms, biodiversity means the whole array of variables among all forms of life; whether in plant or in animal species. The delicate admixture of both of it on the geographical fabric of the earth’s biosphere makes it the only known lively place on the entire cosmos. The complexities and the extent of the term ‘Biodiversity’ can be divided into two broader streams viz. the genetic diversity and the species diversity. The genetic diversity leads to the formation of new species in the process of natural selection through chromosomal mutation in the process of reproduction. The species diversity on the other hand may be within the species or in between the species.