Study on the biodiversity is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary subject. By the end of 1997, the Science Magazine made a prediction about that Biodiversity would be one of the six research hotspots in 1998 and in the near future. Research papers on biodiversity during 1986 to 2008, which included articles, proceedings papers, and reviews, were retrieved from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database. The hotspots and development trends of the biodiversity research were extracted based on data mining by using the Thomson Data Analyzer (TDA) and Aureka analysis platform of Thomson Reuters Company. The results indicated that biodiversity research involved many interrelated fields, such as ecology, environmental science, botany, biodiversity conservation, genetics, marine and freshwater biology, microbiology, agronomy, and so on. Among these fields, biodiversity conservation, genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology had shown relatively fast increase in paper number. The International biodiversity research paid more and more attentions on microsatellites, AFLP, and biogeography. Its hotspots mainly focused on plant diversity development, biodiversity conservation, species richness, genetic diversity, sustainable management, climatic change, forest, soil, ecosystem, etc. The international biodiversity research focused more on the interaction between human society and biodiversity. In addition, the advanced technologies, such as DNA technology and genetic engineering, played a more prominent role in research and conservation of biodiversity.