Australia's kookaburras, koalas, gum trees, platypuses and kangaroos make our island continent very special, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Australia is home to over one million different plant and animal species, and hundreds of different ecosystems. This variety of nature is known as biological diversity or biodiversity .
Biodiversity is a lot more than just the number of different plant and animal species.
This refers to the diversity of life from genes, the genetic building blocks of life, to Blue Whales, the largest animal that has ever lived, to large ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef. While many people think about this variety in terms of the number of species , it also includes the genes that make up the species, and the ecosystems they form. Web of Life. This refers to the connections that bind all living things. Many species depend on each other for their survival.