Biodiversity at UF

The mission of the Biodiversity Institute is to conduct high-quality research and develop programs to advance our primary goals:

• Initiate and lead large-scale, collaborative biological surveys to document and monitor biodiversity on a global scale.
• Conduct collaborative, translational research in biodiversity informatics, education and natural resource management, protection and sustainability.
• Translate information to science and society through workshops, curricula, e-learning initiatives, innovative technologies, museum exhibits and scholarly publications.
• Establish predictive models and policies relevant to accelerating discovery of biodiversity and solving major environmental issues.

Biodiversity refers to the extraordinary variation of life on Earth. Today we recognize that the remarkable diversity of species and environments in our natural world is declining rapidly as the human population expands and landscapes are modified. This accelerating loss of biodiversity has been termed the Biodiversity Crisis and is one of the leading environmental and social issues of the 21st century.  Although natural biological diversity is fundamentally important to a healthy and sustainable planet, the connections between biodiversity and ecosystem services – from the flow of fresh water to the pollination of crop plants – remain poorly understood. Ecological economists note the effect of invasive species (more than $120 billion annually in the US alone) and have begun to place economic value on ecosystem services. Global responses to the Crisis suffer from insufficient information and inadequate policies for sustainable use of natural resources.

Insufficient information and policies are in part due to the slow rate at which biodiversity data are gathered, and the difficulty in accessing the information once it is available. These problems create a situation in which much of the diversity of our planet is likely to disappear before it can be discovered and understood. Principal among its underlying causes is the inadequate infrastructure supporting biodiversity research. The Biodiversity Crisis creates both the necessity and the opportunity for a new type of response.

The Biodiversity Institute explores the world’s past and present biodiversity at all levels of organization. Scientists and students study and evaluate data from all relevant sources on topics of interest and distribute the newly synthesized information to individuals and organizations seeking validated biodiversity information. Analyses by UF Biodiversity scientists will lead to development of new methods, products and technologies. These efforts are all with goals of accelerating the discovery of, improving the understanding of, enhancing the conservation of and disseminating information on the planet’s biological diversity.