This may be wandering away from the Bee-L sphere a bit. If so, I can let it drop.

Christina wrote:
> Peter,  why did you just quote the introduction of the source on stream invertebrates by Beketov et al?  I believe your quote is completely out of context.  They were actually making a case for the need to quantify biodiversity.  

I realize that. I don't avoid authors that present differing points of view. My aim was to show that even as they claim loss of biodiversity, they admit that there is no proven link between contaminants and biodiversity, whatever it is.

> As far as: "Another one of those words everybody loves but nobody can define. ", you should read the papers that Lundgren cited before you claim it cannot be defined. 

Of course it can be defined, but everyone defines it differently. That's my point. There is no real definition of biodiversity. 

As I said: "Distribution of species across the Earth shows strong latitudinal and altitudinal gradients with the number of species decreasing with declining temperatures." 

Biodiversity is far less at the poles than at the equator. Are these ecosystems in trouble because of that? Are tropical ecosystems, being much more diverse, somehow healthier or more robust?

Lundgren states: "The number or abundance of taxa and the relative taxonomic composition of communities are important bases for understanding the role of biodiversity in ecosystem function."

Is biodiversity based on numbers? Is there an equation for it? Have you really thought about this deeply? 

> As the lens of biodiversity conceptualizes nature ‘primarily as a catalog of biota and biota-related entities,’ as Donald Maier notes, it constrains us to express our valuing of nature in terms of ‘the catalog’s size, its contents, and the variety of goods it offers’. To most of us, this will seem a rather narrow hook on which to hang all that we value in the natural world.

from: Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Years: Revolution Or Red Herring?

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