Original version

BBC World Service News Internet

Discovery

Documentaries

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Discovery: Anne Magurran

Magazines & Reviews

Anne Magurran

20/04/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Discovery, Anne MagurranSearch BBC

Anne Magurran on how to measure biodiversity.

Anne Magurran started her career as an ecologist counting moths in an ancient woodland in northern Ireland in the 1970s, when the study of biological diversity was a very young science. Later she studied piranas in a flooded forest in the Amazon. Turning descriptions of the natural world into meaningful statistics is a challenge and Anne has pioneered the measurement of bio-diversity. It’s like an optical illusion, she says. The more you think about bio-diversity the more difficult it is to define. After a bout of meningitis in 2007, she set up BioTime, a global open access database to monitor changes in biodiversity over time and is concerned about ‘the shopping mall effect’. Just as high streets are losing their distinctive shops and becoming dominated by the same chain stores, so biological communities in different parts of the world that once looked very different are now starting to look the same.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Discovery

Anne Magurran

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service News Internet

About BBC World Service