United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on Biological Diversity in began working in November 1988, leading to the publication of the draft Convention on Biological Diversity in May 1992. Since this time, there have been 15 Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to discuss potential global political responses to biodiversity loss. Most recently COP 15 in Montreal, Canada in 2022. Definitions "Biodiversity" is most commonly used to replace the more clearly-defined and long-established terms, species diversity and species richness. Biologists most often define biodiversity as the "totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region". An advantage of this definition is that it presents a unified view of the traditional types of biological variety previously identified: taxonomic diversity (usually measured at the species diversity level) ecological diversity (often viewed from the perspective of ecosystem diversity) morphological diversity (which stems from genetic diversity and molecular diversity) functional diversity (which is a measure of the number of functionally disparate species within a population (e.g. different feeding mechanism, different motility, predator vs prey, etc.)) This multilevel construct is consistent with Datman and Lovejoy. Other definitions include: Wilcox 1982 An explicit definition consistent with this interpretation was first given in a paper by Bruce A. Wilcox commissioned by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) for the 1982 World National Parks Conference. Wilcox's definition was "Biological diversity is the variety of life forms...at all levels of biological systems (i.e., molecular, organismic, population, species and ecosystem)...". Genetic Wilcox 1984 Biodiversity can be defined genetically as the diversity of alleles, genes and organisms. They study processes such as mutation and gene transfer that drive evolution. United Nations 1992 The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit defined "biological diversity" as "the variability among living organisms from all sources, including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems". This definition is used in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Gaston and Spicer 2004 Gaston & Spicer's definition in their book "Biodiversity: an introduction" is "variation of life at all levels of biological organization". Food and Agriculture Organization 2019 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines biodiversity as "the variability that exists among living organisms (both within and between species) and the ecosystems of which they are