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Biological diversity has several meanings; most commonly it means the number of species in a particular location or habitat (species richness). It may also include the genetic diversity within species. This topic has immense practical importance to the sustainability and quality of human life and to human impacts on the environment.

Although human beings depend on other organisms for our survival, we have no accurate inventory of all species for any location. Our knowledge is directly proportional to the conspicuousness of a group of organisms; we know more about large vertebrates than about invertebrates and more about forest trees than forest fungi. Paradoxically, the" charismatic megafauna," about which we have the greatest understanding, depend (as do humans) on the poorly understood and inconspicuous groups such as fungi and bacteria. We know the least about the diversity of those organisms most fundamentally important to our existence.