I think your problem with a scientific definition of diversity is you are treating the word wrong. It is not a this is diverse and this is not. Diversity is a continuum, which makes it hard to pin down. We would likely agree that the tropical rain forest is more diverse than the prairie (I think we'd agree anyway, darn those assumptions), however the prairie itself could be considered diverse because of the different number of grasses, insects, microorganisms etc. This makes it hard to talk about in specific terms in my opinion. I run into the same problem with other words as well when I teach biology. So we teach about parasitism, mutualism, and commensalism. The crux of the matter and the reason students (part of anyway) have such a hard time understanding it is because it's such a sliding scale. We use examples like barnacles on whales as an example of commensalism, but is there really any true example of commensalism? We say the barnacles don't harm the whales and the barnacles hitch a free ride to find food, but don't they create some drag on the whale slowing it down? The same problem comes talking about diversity, I'd say I practice diverse agriculture, I use crop rotation, I plant compatible species together, and I grow a large variety of many things in a small space. If I compare my garden to the neighbors corn field I'm the rain forest of agriculture, but it still pales in comparison the acres of scrub just north of me my bees love so much. We talk about maintaining diversity, but everyone has their own idea where that line is on the continuum. Some mean everything left alone, some maybe everything but those dang coyotes, and then there's the farmer that thinks diversity means growing several different monocultures as insurance to weather and price fluctuations. None of them are wrong they're just on different parts of the same continuum. Jeremy West Michigan *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm