Research Article Biodiversity of Three Backwaters in the South West Coast of India Beslin Leena Grace Department of Biotechnology, Vinayaka Missions University, Salem, Tamil Nadu 636308, India Correspondence should be addressed to Beslin Leena Grace; leenagrace 2002@yahoo.com Received 3 August 2014; Revised 13 November 2014; Accepted 13 November 2014; Published 9 December 2014 Academic Editor: Alexandre Sebbenn Copyright © 2014 Beslin Leena Grace. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For the conservation of biodiversity, it is not sufcient to preserve the living organisms or their gametes alone, because keeping fshes in aquaria or their gametes in freezers cannot conserve the full range of biodiversity which is due to the loss of the ecological complexity in their original habitats. For promoting richer biodiversity in the future, more complexity in biological communities is essential in their natural environments. In order to prevent depletion of biodiversity due to environmental alterations or other ways, it is necessary to understand how the diversity of life particularly at the species level is maintained and it is equally necessary to know how the terminal extinction of species takes place under natural conditions. Moreover, a database on fshery resources of the concerned environment is essential to make decision about specifc programmes on conservation of fsh germplasm resources. Hence, the present study aims to quantify the fsh and shellfsh resources of the selected backwaters such as Kadinamkulam, Veli, and Poonthura to know the real stocks present in such environments. 1. Introduction Biodiversity is the basis of human survival and economics which encompasses all life forms, ecosystems, and ecological processes showing hierarchy at genetic taxon and ecosystem levels. Mass extinction due to the continued increase of human population and alteration of several ecosystems leads to the impairment of diversity patterns. Te genetic diversity in a population is the result of the random occurrence of conservative replication of preexisting gene forms and combi- nations, sudden phenotypic diferences due to mutation and recombination, the positive or negative selection enforced by external pressures, and the random events afecting specifc individuals during the origin of the particular group [1]. Deci- sions regarding creation and management of various kinds of reserves are likely to be the key factors in determining the long term future of biodiversity. Ecological complexity enhances biodiversity through evolutionary and biogeo- graphical processes and its degradation quickly causes the diversity in phenotypic and genotypic traits to decline. Te greatest impact on species deletions will be in those systems where there is limited number of representatives of a partic- ular functional group especially if the species is a dominant one [2]. A variety of indices are available to measure the diversity of biological communities. Tese indices assume the biolog- ical diversity which can be satisfactorily described by two major components such as the number of species and their relative abundance. Tese indices treat all species as equiva- lent and ignore taxonomic, morphological, or any such bio- logical diferences among species of a community [3]. In studies investigating diversity partitioning among sites, bio- diversity indices are almost exclusively based on species com- position even though the defnition of biodiversity includes various facets of the diversity of life [4]. An outstanding feature of the Kerala’s coastal zone is the presence of a large number of perennial or temporary estuar- ies popularly known as backwaters. Tirty backwaters occur along the 590 km long coast of Kerala covering an estimated area of around 2, 42,000 ha. An important feature of backwa- ters is their biological diversity, which refers to the diversity of various species of living organisms. Such diverse combi- nations of living organisms and ecological services constitute the natural resource entitlements of the local communities. Te wide variety of fsh and shellfsh resources, aquaculture systems, brackish water agriculture, mangroves, and innu- merable forms of microorganisms are directly useful and Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Biodiversity Volume 2014, Article ID 524391, 18 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/524391