Imagine you have a jar filled with different types of candy. If you count how many pieces of each type of candy you have, you can make a chart called a distribution. For example, let's say you have 10 pieces of chocolate, 5 pieces of gummies, and 3 pieces of lollipops. This chart shows the distribution of candies in your jar.
Now let's talk about diversity. Diversity means having a lot of different things. In the candy jar example, if you had 10 types of candy instead of just 3, that would be more diverse.
When we talk about diversity and distributions in things like plants or animals, it means how many different types there are and how many there are of each type. For example, a rainforest might have a lot of different types of trees, each with varying numbers of individuals. We could count how many trees of each type there are and make a distribution chart.
Diversity and distributions are important because they can help us understand how different ecosystems work and how we can protect them. The more diverse an ecosystem is, the more stable it can be, because if one type of plant or animal gets sick or dies out, there are plenty of other types to take its place. Plus, knowing the distribution of different species in an ecosystem can help us learn how to protect them and be sure we're not causing harm by accidentally taking away too many of one type.