Of course, it is this value - the measure of local biodiversity - that is most useful for anyone concerned with assessing the health of an ecosystem or protecting it from destruction. In measuring the biodiversity of a particular ecosystem, biologists are usually quite impartial when weighing the relative significance of each species. Most are assigned a value of one, the total number of species then representing the target value. However, there are two conditions under which one species may be weighted more heavily than others. This would certainly be the case for any species that by virtue of its genetic uniqueness would constitute a special loss to the global gene pool in the event of its extinction. The tuatara is a good example of just such a species. As the only surviving member of a family of reptiles that, except for it, died out 60 million years ago, the tuatara qualifies on grounds of genetic uniqueness to be weighted more heavily in calculating the biodiversity of its habitat.