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Prokaryotes & Eukaryotes Biodiversity

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Briefly review how prokaryotes and eukaryotes provide different forms of biodiversity and why.

What does each category tell you about evolution; pick one from an early era and one from today or recent times:

Review two species of the seas

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What do we see when we follow the history and energy flow of life through the patterns of fossils?

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Solution Summary

Biodiversity is defined "as the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems." (1) Prokaryote provide different form of biodiversity because prokaryotes are everywhere. Prokaryotes were the earliest form of life on Earth and they still dominate the ecosystem and biosphere. (2) The biomass of the prokaryotes outweighs all eukaryotes combined. (2) Prokaryotes are found in every environment; they are found in habitat that are too extremely cold, extremely hot, extremely salty, extremely acidic, and extremely alkaline for any eukaryote. Prokaryote dominated the biosphere because they have flexible diverse adaptation that allow them to live any places. ( 2) They have diverse genome that allow them to adapt to all places. (2) Prokaryote can grow and reproduce at an extremely fast time; some can produce new generation in less than 20 minutes. Prokaryote play crucial role in the biosphere because if they disappear from the Earth, there would be no other life, even human. We depend on the prokaryotes for survival. Most prokaryotes are responsible for the recycling of chemical and biological element from the ecosystems. They can decompose dead animals, plants, and waste products. They can use carbon dioxide to make organic compounds that passed on to the food chain. (2)

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Biology - Prokaryotes & Eukaryotes Biodiversity, Evolution, Fossils (See Questions Below)
Briefly review how prokaryotes and eukaryotes provide different forms of biodiversity and why.

Biodiversity is defined "as the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems." (1)
Prokaryote provide different form of biodiversity because prokaryotes are everywhere. Prokaryotes were the earliest form of life on Earth and they still dominate the ecosystem and biosphere. (2) The biomass of the prokaryotes outweighs all eukaryotes combined. (2) Prokaryotes are found in every environment; they are found in habitat that are too extremely cold, extremely hot, extremely salty, extremely acidic, and extremely alkaline for any eukaryote. Prokaryote dominated the biosphere because they have flexible diverse adaptation that allow them to live any places. ( 2) They have diverse genome that allow them to adapt to all places. (2) Prokaryote can grow and reproduce at an extremely fast time; some can produce new generation in less than 20 minutes. Prokaryote play crucial role in the biosphere because if they disappear from the Earth, there would be no other life, even human. We depend on the prokaryotes for survival. Most prokaryotes are responsible for the recycling of chemical and biological element from the ecosystems. They can decompose dead animals, plants, and waste products. They can use carbon dioxide to make organic compounds that passed on to the food chain. (2)

Eukaryotes contribute to biodiversity in that Eukaryotes contain four groups of species:
Protist, Fungi, plants, and animal
Protist - extremely diverse eukaryotes are unicellular, but very complex at the single cell level.
The single cell protist must carry out all basic functions of life that are comparable to the multicellular eukaryotes. They are photoautotrophs, which means they contain chloroplast. Some are heterotrophs that absorb organic molecule by injesting food. There are some that are both photoautrophs and heterotrophs; they can do both photosynthesis and heterotrophic. (2) Protist are very diverse, and the life cycle vary greatly in that some are asexual, while most does meiosis. Most of the diversity of protist is the result of the endosymbiosis, a process which unicellular organisms engulfed other cells, which evolved into organelles in the host cell. Some protist such as dinoflagellates are very abundance in marine and freshwater habitats. The dinoflagellates and ...

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