What is Biodiversity?

The simplest concepts of biodiversity are something we are taught from an early age.  I am a human, that is a dog, this is a cow.  They all live on the farm.  The beauty of natural ecosystems is they have developed a self-sustaining collection of hundreds of species that all depend on each other in some way.  There are thousands of these different ecosystems across the globe.  All of the food, many materials, pharmaceuticals, the hospitable environment we live in, and even our very existence are all due to millennia of interplay between genetic material and environmental conditions that create and sustain species.  I have chosen to define biodiversity as

           the measure of the genetic and taxonomic complexity of the biotic component of an ecosystem, up to and including the entire planet. 

Biodiversity has provided humans almost everything we have, but we often disrupt these natural systems faster than they are able to repair themselves.  We are far from a complete understanding of what keeps the balance of the natural world, and are likely exceeding several thresholds of a sustainable future for ourselves.