A mussel bed along Northern California’s Dillon Beach is as healthy and biodiverse as it was about 80 years ago, when two young students surveyed it shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked and one was sent to fight in World War II.
Biodiversity is, simply, the variety of life on Earth, and can be characterized at various levels from genes, to species and ecosystems. Understanding the causes of patterns of the diversity of life on Earth and the functional consequences of natural and human-caused variation in that diversity are fundamental goals of ecology and a focus of active research at BML. These studies are all the more pressing given the impact that human activities have on biodiversity.
