Botany MCQs for NEET — Practice Questions with Answers

(c): Ex-situ conservation is not responsible for biodiversity loss, rather it is a method of conservation of biodiversity. It conserves selected rare plants/ animals in places outside their natural homes.

Alien species invasion, co-extinction and deforestation result in extinction of many species and loss of biodiversity.

(a) Biodiversity hotspots are areas of high endemism and high level of species richness.
They are determined mainly by three factors:
(i) Number of species/species diversity
(ii) Degree of endemism
(iii) Degree of threat

(c) Western Ghats occur along the Westerns coast of India in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. There is high degree of species richness and endemism of flowering plants, amphibians,
reptiles, some mammals and butterflies.

(d) The factors that reduce diversity are drop in temperature and greater seasonal variability. The temperature drops about 6.5 C with increase in altitude by 1000 m.

(b) IUCN stands for International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

(d) The major threat to human population is population explosion and climatic changes including deforestation and pollution.

(a) The Amazon rainforest is a moist brodleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13% and with minor amounts in Columbia. Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana. States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas after it. The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most species rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world.

Sacred groves are found in Khasi and Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, Aravalli Hills of Rajasthan, Western Ghat regions of Karnataka and Maharashtra and the Sarguja, Chanda and Bastar areas of Madhya Pradesh. In Meghalaya, the sacred groves are the last refuges for a large number of rare and threatened plants.

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‘Biodiversity hotspots’ are the regions with very high levels of species richness and high degree of endemism that is, species confined to that region and not found anywhere else.

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