How many biomes are there? Earth is a truly remarkable place. It’s home to everything from vast arid deserts and dense tropical rainforests to coral reefs and high alpine meadows.
But have you ever stopped to wonder how many different biomes there are on our planet?
In this article, we’ll discuss the 26 incredible types of biomes that you can find across the globe. We’ll explain what makes a biome a biome, and we’ll clue you into the various plants and animals that call each of these different ecosystems home.
What is a Biome?
The word ‘biome’ might seem simple enough, but there’s actually quite a bit of disagreement among researchers about what the word actually means.
Different organizations have their own definitions for what a biome is, however, they all effectively state that a biome is an area with a shared climate that can support a specific group of flora and fauna.
This definition seems simple enough. But the problem is that it’s hard to distinguish the word ‘biome’ from words and phrases like ‘ecoregion’ and ‘ecological zone.’
Depending on who you ask, a biome might be defined as a collection of ecoregions or ecological zones. These ecoregions also contain ecosystems and these ecosystems contain different types of habitats. But, again, this is still a matter of some debate in various scientific circles and some researchers don’t make a distinction between ‘biome’ and ‘ecoregion.’
To keep things simple, in this article, we’re going to focus on how the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) classifies biomes. The organization first started classifying biomes with its Global 200 project. It lists 26 types of biomes (these are called ecoregions in some WWF publications) that we’ll discuss here.
26 Spectacular Types of Biomes of the World
On a planet with tens of millions of plant and animal species, classifying different parts of the Earth by their flora, fauna, and climate isn’t easy. Thankfully, some dedicated scientists have done the hard work for us and we now have this list of the 26 types of biomes.
Up next, we’ll take a closer look at the 26 biome types as defined by the WWF. That way you can become an expert in all things global ecology.
Why are biomes so important for LAC?
It is important to understand that everything on this planet is highly interconnected. Biomes play a critical role in the understanding of ecology because they help scientists understand a specific plant or animal, as well as the role it plays in its community and the characteristics that it has developed to live in a particular environment. These smaller environments and ecosystems make up the larger biomes, which make up the entirety of the earth.
Latin America and the Caribbean are massive and diverse regions that are home to over 50% of the world’s biodiversity. Its biomes are some of the most-species-rich on the planet. Some of the species are endemic (native and restricted to a certain place) to biomes in LAC. We have already explored some of the flora and fauna that are parts of the desert and rainforest biomes of LAC, however, there are many other biomes that exist in Latin America and the Caribbean.
About the Biomes of the World
Scientists disagree as to exactly how many biomes there are on Earth and there are many different classification schemes that have been developed to describe the world’s biomes. For the purposes of this site, we distinguish five major biomes. The five major biomes include aquatic, desert, forest, grassland, and tundra biomes. Within each biome, we also define numerous different types of sub-habitats.
Aquatic Biome
The aquatic biome includes the habitats around the world that are dominated by water—from tropical reefs to brackish mangroves, to Arctic lakes. The aquatic biome is divided into two main groups of habitats based on their salinity—freshwater habitats and marine habitats.
Freshwater habitats are aquatic habitats with low salt concentrations (below one percent). Freshwater habitats include lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, wetlands, swamps, lagoons, and bogs.
Marine habitats are aquatic habitats with high salt concentrations (more than one percent). Marine habitats include seas, coral reefs, and oceans. There are also habitats where freshwater mixes with saltwater. In these places, you’ll find mangroves, salt marshes, and mudflats.
The various aquatic habitats of the world support a diverse assortment of wildlife including virtually every group of animals—fishes, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and birds.
Desert Biome
The desert biome includes terrestrial habitats that receive very little rainfall throughout the year. The desert biome covers about one-fifth of the Earth’s surface and is divided into four sub-habitats based on their aridity, climate, location, and temperature—arid deserts, semi-arid deserts, coastal deserts, and cold deserts.
Arid deserts are hot, dry deserts that occur at low latitudes around the world. Temperatures remain warm year-round, although they are hottest during the summer months. There is little rainfall in arid deserts and what rain does fall is often exceeded by evaporation. Arid deserts occur in North America, Central America, South America, Africa, southern Asia, and Australia.
Semi-arid deserts are generally not as hot and dry as arid deserts. Semi-arid deserts experience long, dry summers and cool winters with some precipitation. Semi-arid deserts occur in North America, Newfoundland, Greenland, Europe, and Asia.
Coastal deserts generally occur on the western edges of continents at approximately 23°N and 23°S latitude (also known as the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn).
In these locations, cold ocean currents run parallel to the coast and produce heavy fogs that drift over the deserts. Although the humidity of coastal deserts may be high, rainfall remains rare. Examples of coastal deserts include the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Namib Desert of Namibia.
Cold deserts are deserts that have low temperatures and long winters. Cold deserts occur in the Arctic, Antarctic, and above the tree lines of mountain ranges. Many areas of the tundra biome can also be considered cold deserts. Cold deserts often have more precipitation than other types of deserts.
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