Biodiversity

Explain how physical factors influence the distribution of biodiversity shown. (10)

Explain how physical factors influence the distribution of biodiversity shown. (10)

A factor which influences the distribution of biodiversity will be extreme climate. This is a limiting factor as it means that the species will need to be adapted to the environment, for example in the Antarctica this experiences extreme coldness, so the plants will need to be able to survive and grow in this or they will not last long. Also Antarctica experiences long periods of darkness so the plans will need to be able to survive without long periods of sun, or again they won’t be able to grow in this environment. This explains why on the map shown Antarctica has less than 100 species of plants per 10,000 square kilometres as it is too much of an extreme environment for plants to be able to survive.
            Another factor which will increase the distribution of biodiversity is how endemic and area is. Endemic means that there are a lot of unique species. This can be from a result of the area being isolated, so we see this happening in the Philippines, and in Indonesia.   In some parts of these they are exceeding over 5000 plant species per square kilometres. The isolation is normally expected to reduce the number of species as it means they are unable to get to the island, but in fact is has only helped increase endemism.
            Some areas also have perfect conditions for growth of plant species, such as areas around the equator or 20-30 degrees north and south of it. These perfect growing conditions include lots of light, large amounts of rainfall. They also make it a perfect and fit environment for plant species to grow as they have an equal amount of all the needed things to grow.   You could say that this was around the North of Australia as here it is shown to have 1000-1499 plant species per 10,000 kilometres and this is a part of Australia which receives good levels of...