Warming climates force plants to compete with each other
Climate change is reshaping ecosystems at an alarming rate. While much attention goes to the loss of animal species, plants are also vanishing. Since 1750, around 600 plant species have gone extinct, a number twice as high as animal extinctions.
Yet, little is known about which plants are most at risk and how biodiversity shifts affect ecosystems.
Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute have taken a deep look into the past to answer these questions. Using ancient DNA preserved in lake sediments, they reconstructed how plant life changed between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago, a period of significant global warming.
This research, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, sheds light on how past extinctions could predict future biodiversity loss. The study provides a clearer picture of how plant communities shift under warming conditions and what this could mean for ecosystems today.
The forgotten side of plant extinction
The loss of plants rarely makes headlines, even though they form the foundation of life. Many people recognize the extinction of large mammals like the woolly mammoth, but few think about the plants that vanished alongside them.
This oversight is partly due to the difficulty of studying plant extinctions. Traditional methods rely on fossilized pollen, which cannot always identify individual species.
“Everyone knows that the woolly mammoth went extinct, but virtually no-one mentions the plants that were lost at the end of the last ice age,” said Professor Ulrike Herzschuh from the Alfred Wegener Institute. “Until recently, we lacked suitable methods for investigating the extinction of plant species in detail.”
To overcome this challenge, the researchers used advanced techniques to extract and analyze ancient DNA from lake sediments. These sediments contain genetic material from plants that lived up to 30,000 years ago.
By enriching and sequencing these DNA fragments, scientists could compare them with modern databases and reconstruct past plant communities.
Climate change alters plant interactions
Shifts in climate do not just affect which plants survive but also how they interact with one another. The research revealed that plant communities undergo drastic transformations as temperatures change.
“We’ve now been able to determine in detail when and where species appeared and disappeared in Alaska and Siberia,” noted Ulrike Herzschuh.
“Our research shows that the composition of plant species changed substantially at the end of the last ice age, and that this was accompanied by fundamental changes in the ecological conditions.”
One of the most striking findings was the shift in how plants interact. During cold periods, plants often support each other, creating environments where multiple species can thrive and reduce the risk of extinction.
However, in warm periods, competition becomes dominant. This pattern is still visible today in tundra regions where cushion plants provide shelter for other species.
“In the DNA from the lake sediments, we found e.g. many cushion plants, which most likely supported the expansion of other species by forming sheltered habitats,” said Herzschuh. This sheltering effect was essential for biodiversity in colder climates.
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