Why Poor Places Are More Diverse
Thanks to The Kwongan Foundation at the University of Western Australia for supporting this video: http://www.plants.uwa.edu.au/alumni/kwongan MinuteEarth is now on Patreon! Please support...
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A soccer-field sized patch of forest in frigid Alaska has about 40 different species of plants, compared with about 70 in temperate England and 300 in the Amazonian rain forest. These biodiversity differences hold true for entire countries, too: England has 1500 plant species, while tropical Guyana. The super-diversity of tropical rainforests is only equalled in one other type of ecosystem on Earth: scrubby fire-prone shrublands that grow in western Australia and southern Africa. These shrublands may not look as majestic as tropical rainforests, but in a given area, they’re home to similarly stupendous numbers of species. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the rainforests and shrublands are easy places for plants to live. In fact, both ecosystems owe the...
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A soccer-field sized patch of forest in frigid Alaska has about 40 different species of plants, compared with about 70 in temperate England and 300 in the Amazonian rain forest. These biodiversity differences hold true for entire countries, too: England has 1500 plant species, while tropical Guyana. The super-diversity of tropical rainforests is only equalled in one other type of ecosystem on Earth: scrubby fire-prone shrublands that grow in western Australia and southern Africa. These shrublands may not look as majestic as tropical rainforests, but in a given area, they’re home to similarly stupendous numbers of species. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the rainforests and shrublands are easy places for plants to live. In fact, both ecosystems owe the...
