Query: Because current climate change is so rapid, the way species typically adapt (eg - migration) is, in most cases, simply not be possible.

Relevant passages:
Biodiversity <=SEP=> Biodiversity a portmanteau of `` biological diversity , '' generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth . According to the United Nations Environment Programme , biodiversity typically measures variation at the genetic , the species , and the ecosystem level . Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator , which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity . Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth , and is richest in the tropics . These tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 per cent of earth 's surface , and contain about 90 percent of the world 's species . Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific , where sea surface temperature is highest and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans . There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity . Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots , and has been increasing through time , but will be likely to slow in the future .   Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions . More than 99.9 percent of all species , amounting to over five billion species , that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct . Estimates on the number of Earth 's current species range from 10 million to 14 million , of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described . More recently , in May 2016 , scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described . The total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes . In comparison , the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC ( trillion tons of carbon ) . In July 2016 , scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor ( LUCA ) of all organisms living on Earth .   The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old . The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago , during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon . There are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia . Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland . More recently , in 2015 , `` remains of biotic life '' were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia . According to one of the researchers , `` If life arose relatively quickly on Earth . . then it could be common in the universe . ''   Since life began on Earth , five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity . The Phanerozoic eon ( the last 540 million years ) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion -- a period during which the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared . The next 400 million years included repeated , massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events . In the Carboniferous , rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life . The Permian -- Triassic extinction event , 251 million years ago , was the worst ; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years . The most recent , the Cretaceous -- Paleogene extinction event , occurred 65 million years ago and has often attracted more attention than others because it resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs .   The period since the emergence of humans has displayed an ongoing biodiversity reduction and an accompanying loss of genetic diversity . Named the Holocene extinction , the reduction is caused primarily by human impacts , particularly habitat destruction . Conversely , biodiversity impacts human health in a number of ways , both positively and negatively .   The United Nations designated 2011 -- 2020 as the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity .

Nature <=SEP=> Nature , in the broadest sense , is the natural , physical , or material world or universe . `` Nature '' can refer to the phenomena of the physical world , and also to life in general . The study of nature is a large part of science . Although humans are part of nature , human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena .   The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura , or `` essential qualities , innate disposition '' , and in ancient times , literally meant `` birth '' . Natura is a Latin translation of the Greek word physis , which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants , animals , and other features of the world develop of their own accord . The concept of nature as a whole , the physical universe , is one of several expansions of the original notion ; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers , and has steadily gained currency ever since . This usage continued during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries .   Within the various uses of the word today , `` nature '' often refers to geology and wildlife . Nature can refer to the general realm of living plants and animals , and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects -- the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord , such as the weather and geology of the Earth . It is often taken to mean the `` natural environment '' or wilderness -- wild animals , rocks , forest , and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention , or which persist despite human intervention . For example , manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature , unless qualified as , for example , `` human nature '' or `` the whole of nature '' . This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial , with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind . Depending on the particular context , the term `` natural '' might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural .

Invasive species <=SEP=> An invasive species is a plant , fungus , or animal species that is not native to a specific location ( an introduced species ) , and which has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment , human economy or human health .   One study pointed out widely divergent perceptions of the criteria for invasive species among researchers ( p. 135 ) and concerns with the subjectivity of the term `` invasive '' ( p. 136 ) . Some of the alternate usages of the term are below :   The term as most often used applies to introduced species ( also called `` non-indigenous '' or `` non-native '' ) that adversely affect the habitats and bioregions they invade economically , environmentally , or ecologically . Such invasive species may be either plants or animals and may disrupt by dominating a region , wilderness areas , particular habitats , or wildland -- urban interface land from loss of natural controls ( such as predators or herbivores ) . This includes non-native invasive plant species labeled as exotic pest plants and invasive exotics growing in native plant communities . It has been used in this sense by government organizations as well as conservation groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN ) and the California Native Plant Society . The European Union defines `` Invasive Alien Species '' as those that are , firstly , outside their natural distribution area , and secondly , threaten biological diversity . It is also used by land managers , botanists , researchers , horticulturalists , conservationists , and the public for noxious weeds . The kudzu vine ( Pueraria lobata ) , Andean Pampas grass ( Cortaderia jubata ) , and yellow starthistle ( Centaurea solstitialis ) are examples .  An alternate usage broadens the term to include indigenous or `` native '' species along with non-native species , that have colonized natural areas ( p. 136 ) . Deer are an example , considered to be overpopulating their native zones and adjacent suburban gardens , by some in the Northeastern and Pacific Coast regions of the United States .  Sometimes the term is used to describe a non-native or introduced species that has become widespread ( p. 136 ) . However , not every introduced species has adverse effects on the environment . A nonadverse example is the common goldfish ( Carassius auratus ) , which is found throughout the United States , but rarely achieves high densities ( p. 136 ) .

Extinction <=SEP=> In biology and ecology , extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms ( taxon ) , normally a species . The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species , although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point . Because a species ' potential range may be very large , determining this moment is difficult , and is usually done retrospectively . This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa , where a species presumed extinct abruptly `` reappears '' ( typically in the fossil record ) after a period of apparent absence .   More than 99 percent of all species , amounting to over five billion species , that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct . Estimates on the number of Earth 's current species range from 10 million to 14 million , of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described . More recently , in May 2016 , scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described .   Through evolution , species arise through the process of speciation -- where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche -- and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition . The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established . A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance , although some species , called living fossils , survive with virtually no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years .   Mass extinctions are relatively rare events ; however , isolated extinctions are quite common . Only recently have extinctions been recorded and scientists have become alarmed at the current high rate of extinctions . Most species that become extinct are never scientifically documented . Some scientists estimate that up to half of presently existing plant and animal species may become extinct by 2100 .   A dagger symbol next to a species name is often used to indicate its extinction .