UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q97: The word ‘Biodiversity’ was coined

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q97?

A. Correct — A, W. G. Rosen. The word is a contraction of the older phrase 'biological diversity'. **W. G. Rosen** used the shortened form in the mid-1980s while organising the National Forum on BioDiversity, held in Washington, D.C. in September 1986. The proceedings of that forum were published in 1988 as BioDiversity, edited by E. O. Wilson, and the compressed word travelled from there into science, policy and treaty law. **Rosen supplied the word; Wilson carried it into circulation.** A question about who coined a term is asking who first used it, not who made it famous. One caution on the key: the letter marked here is from the Commission's provisional key. The attribution itself is the standard published account of the term's origin, so the reasoning does not rest on the key alone.

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 97 of 149

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2025 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

The word ‘Biodiversity’ was coined by:

(a)W. G. Rosen
(b)Tansely
(c)Darwin
(d)David

Answer

Why

Correct — A, W. G. Rosen.

The word is a contraction of the older phrase 'biological diversity'. W. G. Rosen used the shortened form in the mid-1980s while organising the National Forum on BioDiversity, held in Washington, D.C. in September 1986.

The proceedings of that forum were published in 1988 as BioDiversity, edited by E. O. Wilson, and the compressed word travelled from there into science, policy and treaty law.

Rosen supplied the word; Wilson carried it into circulation. A question about who coined a term is asking who first used it, not who made it famous.

One caution on the key: the letter marked here is from the Commission's provisional key. The attribution itself is the standard published account of the term's origin, so the reasoning does not rest on the key alone.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Tansely — The name printed here is that of the British ecologist A. G. Tansley, and the word he introduced is 'ecosystem', in his 1935 paper in the journal Ecology, 'The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms'.
Both words are founding vocabulary of ecology, but they name different objects. Tansley's word names a biological community together with its physical surroundings treated as one working unit. Biodiversity names the variety of life itself, at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels.
(c)
Darwin — Charles Darwin's claim is on the mechanism rather than the vocabulary: On the Origin of Species (1859) and evolution by natural selection.
He wrote at length about the variety and common descent of living forms, but the compressed noun for that variety belongs to a conservation-policy setting more than a century later.
Standing in biology is not evidence of coinage. A coined term carries its own first user and its own date, and the two have to be learnt as a pair.
(d)
David — This option gives a surname with no initials and no field attached, so it offers no person and no date you can test against the history of the term.
Where the surname does anchor a general-studies fact is David Hare, associated with the establishment of Hindu College at Calcutta in 1817.
An unqualified surname is the weakest kind of option on a coinage question: it can only earn the mark if you can name the person and the work behind it.

Concept

Biodiversity is a contraction of 'biological diversity' — the variety of life read at three nested levels: variation within a species (genetic), variation between species, and variation across ecosystems.

The contraction is worth knowing as history because it was made deliberately, for one 1986 meeting, and then hardened into the standard term of environmental science and law.

The word arrived as conservation was widening from the protection of single species to the protection of whole systems, and the field needed one noun covering genes, species and habitats together.

Six years after the forum, the Convention on Biological Diversity was opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and gave the idea a treaty definition. That is the route by which the term entered national law, including India's Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

Key facts

W. G. Rosen shortened 'biological diversity' to 'biodiversity' while organising the National Forum on BioDiversity, held in Washington, D.C. in September 1986.
The forum's proceedings appeared in 1988 as the volume BioDiversity, edited by E. O. Wilson, which carried the word into wide scientific use.
The phrase 'biological diversity' was first used by Raymond F. Dasmann in 1968; Thomas Lovejoy brought it into conservation writing around 1980.
A. G. Tansley introduced 'ecosystem' in a 1935 paper in the journal Ecology, 'The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms'.
Ernst Haeckel coined 'ecology' in 1866, and 'biosphere' is credited to the geologist Eduard Suess in 1875.
Norman Myers introduced the 'biodiversity hotspot' idea in 1988; the criteria require 1,500 or more endemic vascular plants and at least 70 per cent of original primary vegetation lost.
Conservation International's mapping places parts of India within four hotspots: the Himalaya, Indo-Burma, the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka, and Sundaland.
Article 2 of the Convention on Biological Diversity defines biological diversity as variability among living organisms, including diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.
The Convention on Biological Diversity was opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and entered into force on 29 December 1993.

Which term belongs to which name

Biodiversity — the contracted word→W. G. Rosen, 1986 forum

Biological diversity — the longer phrase→Raymond F. Dasmann, 1968 (popularised by Thomas Lovejoy, c. 1980)

Ecosystem→A. G. Tansley, 1935

Biodiversity hotspot→Norman Myers, 1988

Evolution by natural selection→Charles Darwin, 1859

The highlighted row is what this question asks for; the rows below it are the names the neighbouring terms belong to.

Study next

Term-and-coiner pairs in ecology: ecology, ecosystem, biosphere, biodiversity, biodiversity hotspotThe three levels of biodiversity — genetic, species and ecosystem — and the measures alpha, beta and gamma diversityBiodiversity hotspots: the criteria used and the four that reach into IndiaThe Convention on Biological Diversity and its protocols — Cartagena on biosafety, Nagoya on access and benefit-sharingThe Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and its three-tier structure: National Biodiversity Authority, State Biodiversity Boards, Biodiversity Management Committees

Common traps

The person who coins a term and the person who makes it famous can be different; this stem asks who first used the word.
'Biological diversity' and 'biodiversity' have separate origin stories — the phrase is the earlier one, the contraction came later.
Tansley's name is anchored to 'ecosystem'; sliding it across to a neighbouring ecology term loses the mark.
Picking the most celebrated biologist on a list treats fame as evidence of authorship, which a coinage question does not reward.
A bare surname with no initials and no field cannot be verified, so it should not gain credibility from being short and familiar.
Norman Myers goes with 'biodiversity hotspot' and Rosen with 'biodiversity'; the two coinages are two years and two ideas apart.

The plainest form is the one used here — a single line naming a term and four names to choose between.

A second form folds the coinage into a statement-evaluation set, where Rosen sits beside claims about hotspots, their coiner and their number, and each statement has to be judged on its own.

Related PYQs

NDA_GAT_2021_II_Q622021

The same attribution — Walter G. Rosen and 1986 — but placed inside a set of four statements to be judged, so it also calls on the hotspot material: Norman Myers, 1988, and how many hotspots are recognised. In the present question the coinage on its own settles the answer.

MPPSC_2023_PRE_PaperI_Q642023

The same device in a different subject: who first coined a word, with 'Pakistan' in place of a scientific term. What carries over is the habit of separating the first user of a word from the figure most associated with the thing it names; the underlying content shares nothing.

UPSC_1998_GS1_Q1191998

Darwin appears in both. There he sits in a match-the-list of theories to scientists, alongside De Vries, Beadle and Tatum, and Jacob and Monod — the setting where his name is the intended answer. This question asks about vocabulary rather than a theory, which is why he does not fit.

UPSC_2009_GS1_Q522009

This is where the surname in option (d) has a home: the stem names David Hare as a collaborator in establishing Hindu College at Calcutta. The subject is entirely different — the overlap is the name alone, which is what makes the loose surname feel familiar here.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The term 'ecosystem' was introduced by:
- (a)A. G. Tansley
- (b)E. P. Odum
- (c)Ernst Haeckel
- (d)W. G. Rosen
Answera — A. G. Tansley introduced 'ecosystem' in his 1935 paper in Ecology.
E. P. Odum built ecosystem ecology into a discipline through Fundamentals of Ecology, but he worked with a word already in place. Ernst Haeckel's coinage is 'ecology', in 1866. W. G. Rosen's is 'biodiversity', in the mid-1980s.
practice — not a real PYQ
The term 'biodiversity hotspot' is associated with:
- (a)E. O. Wilson
- (b)Thomas Lovejoy
- (c)Norman Myers
- (d)W. G. Rosen
Answerc — Norman Myers introduced the biodiversity hotspot idea in 1988, identifying regions with exceptional endemism under heavy habitat loss.
E. O. Wilson edited the 1988 volume BioDiversity and spread the parent term. Thomas Lovejoy brought the earlier phrase 'biological diversity' — first used by Raymond F. Dasmann in 1968 — into scientific use around 1980. W. G. Rosen coined 'biodiversity' itself, not the hotspot concept.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Convention on Biological Diversity was opened for signature at:
- (a)The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972
- (b)The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992
- (c)The World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002
- (d)The tenth Conference of the Parties, Nagoya, 2010
Answerb — the Convention was opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and entered into force on 29 December 1993.
Stockholm 1972 predates the Convention and led to the creation of UNEP. Johannesburg 2002 reviewed sustainable development commitments. Nagoya 2010 is a meeting of the Convention's own parties, where the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing was adopted.