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“Biodiversity” is often defined as the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems.

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“Biodiversity” was coined as a contraction of “biological diversity” in 1985, but the new term arguably has taken on a meaning and imports all of its own.

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A symposium in 1986 and the follow‒up book Biodiversity, edited by biologist E.O. Wilson, heralded the population of this concept.

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Ten years later, Takacs described its ascent.

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Overall, the major issue for biodiversity is how its conservation may be integrated with other needs of society.

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British ecologist Norman Myers defined the biodiversity hotspot concept in 1988 to address the dilemma that conservationists face: what areas are the most immediately important for conserving biodiversity?

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The biodiversity hotspots hold especially high numbers of endemic species, yet their combined area of remaining habitat covers only 2.3 per cent of the Earth’s land surface.

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Each hotspot faces extreme threats and has already lost at least 70 per cent of its original natural vegetation.

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Over 50 per cent of the world’s plant species and 42 per cent of all terrestrial vertebrate species are endemic to the 34 biodiversity hotspots.

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A seminal paper by Norman Myers in 1985 first identified ten tropical forest “hotspots” characterized both by exceptional levels of plant endemism and by serious levels of habitat loss.

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In 1990, Myers added a further eight hotspots, including four Mediterranean‒type ecosystems.

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Conservat‒ ional International adopted Myers’ hotspots as its institutional blueprint in 1989, and in 1996, the organization made the decision to undertake a reassessment of the hotspots concept, including an examination of whether key areas had been overlooked.

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Three years later an extensive global review was undertaken, which introduced quantitative thresholds for the designation of biodiversity hotspots: To qualify as a hotspot, a region must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 0.5% or 1,500 species of vascular plants as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70% of its primary vegetation.

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Around the world, at least 25 areas qualify under this definition, with nine others possible candidates.

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These sites support nearly 60% of the world's plant, bird, mammals, reptile and amphibian species, with a very high share of endemic species.