"Biodiversity," Alice might have said, as in Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll, 1871), is like a portmanteau: two meanings packed into a single word. A blend of "biology" and "diversity," the word "biodiversity," adopted in the 1980s and popularized in 1992 following the Convention on Biological Diversity, encompasses diversity both within and between living species, as well as the diversity of ecosystems, their interactions and their evolutionary processes. The erosion of our planet's biodiversity has become a pressing issue—but why should we seek to protect it?
*The painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo depicts biodiversity in the 16th century.*
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