NATURE IN FRAGMENTS: THE LEGACY OF SPRAWL
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NATURE IN FRAGMENTS: THE LEGACY OF SPRAWL
INTRODUCTION
Biological diversity (also known as biodiversity) refers to the variety of life on Earth as well as the natural interactions, cycles, and processes that connect it all.
In its broadest sense, biodiversity encompasses individual species, genetic variety within species, natural communities in which these species interact, and ecosystems and landscapes in which species evolve and coexist.
Although conservation efforts to safeguard biodiversity tend to focus on unusual flora or uncommon animals, biodiversity actually embraces all of nature, including both common and rare components, as well as even more obscure creatures such as fungi and bacteria.
Natural catastrophes like fires, floods, and storms are now recognised by ecologists as critical to ecosystem integrity. These processes can be predictable disruptive events, such as annual flooding and fires that pass through a forest on a regular basis, or unanticipated and uncommon large-scale disturbances, such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions.
All are essential to the survival of ecosystems and the species they support. Sprawling growth suppresses or alters these natural disturbance regimes. Sprawl can lead to anthropogenic disturbances such clearing for home construction, trampling, trash, and vandalism.
Pollination is widely described as the movement of pollen within and between compatible blooms. Pollen transports male nuclei, hence pollination is an important phase in sexual reproduction for seed plants, which dominate Earth’s terrestrial flora.
Wind, birds, bats, and insects, mostly bees, but also beetles, flies, wasps, moths, and butterflies, are primary pollinators. There is insufficient information to make broad generalisations about the links between sprawl, pollination, and seed set, although urban and suburban development does affect ecological factors crucial to pollinators, such as plant community composition and reproductive chances.
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