• More 'losers' than 'winners' among plant

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Mar 10 21:30:40 2022
    More 'losers' than 'winners' among plants in the age of humans

    Date:
    March 10, 2022
    Source:
    Smithsonian
    Summary:
    A new analysis spanning more than 86,000 plant species finds that
    on this human-dominated planet, many more species of plants are
    poised to 'lose' rather than 'win.' T


    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    A new analysis spanning more than 86,000 plant species from John Kress,
    botany curator emeritus at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Gary Krupnick, head of the museum's plant conservation unit,
    finds that on this human-dominated planet, many more species of plants
    are poised to "lose" rather than "win." The study was published today,
    March 10, in the journal Plants, People, Planet.


    ==========================================================================
    From changing Earth's climate to destroying, degrading and altering
    ecosystems on a massive scale, human choices now largely dictate the environmental conditions across much of the globe and, as a result, which species of plants and animals can survive and persist and which will go extinct. Species lucky enough to be directly or indirectly aided by human activities are likely to survive and can be thought of as "winners,"
    while those that are pushed to ecological irrelevance or extinction by
    those same activities are the ultimate "losers" in evolutionary terms.

    Kress encountered this concept of evolutionary winners and losers in
    the age of humans (known to some researchers as the Anthropocene), in
    the writings of John McNeill and wanted to see if it might be possible
    to tally the plant species that were winning and losing now and in
    the future.

    "I actually started this project from a place of optimism," Kress
    said. "I had just planted all these trees around my house in Vermont
    and thought to myself that maybe there are actually more winners than
    losers, and we are just focused on everything that's disappearing."
    In the summer of 2019, Kress brought Krupnick into the fold to help
    compile and analyze the mountains of data required to put every plant
    species for which there was enough information into the categories of
    winners and losers. The researchers split the winners and losers into
    species that are and are not useful to humans.

    In addition to these four categories, Kress and Krupnick created four
    others: Species that appeared likely to win or lose in the future
    were deemed tentative winners or potential losers, and species that do
    not seem to be winning or losing at present were considered currently
    neutral. A fourth and final category included 571 species that have
    already gone extinct.



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    To place plants in these categories, Kress and Krupnick combed through databases that listed endangered plant species, economically important
    species such as crops, invasive and weedy plants, and endangered plants
    that are involved in legal and illegal global trade.

    In total, the researchers were able to place 86,592 species of
    vascular plants -- a large group of plants that have vascular tissue
    which transport water, nutrients and other substances -- into the
    eight categories that describe their prospects for survival in the Anthropocene. That may sound like an inconceivably large number of
    species, but it is actually just under 30% of the nearly 300,000 known
    species of vascular plants. There simply was not enough data to categorize
    the remaining 70% of global plant diversity, which reflects how much is
    left to learn about Earth's botanical riches, Kress said.

    The analysis revealed that losers currently outnumber winners, and
    that losers are likely to continue to outpace winners in the future
    if human impact on the planet maintains its current trajectory. Kress
    and Krupnick categorized 20,293 species of plants as losers, with the
    vast majority of those losing species being identified as not useful to
    humans. By contrast, the researchers found just 6,913 species of winners,
    with all but 164 of those species having some human use.

    In the future, barring significant changes in how people conduct
    themselves on Earth, losers are projected to continue to outnumber
    winners, with 26,002 species in the potential losers category compared
    to 18,664 species in the tentative winners category.

    To look for evolutionary patterns within the clear winners and losers identified by the study, the researchers also mapped the locations of
    these lucky and unlucky species on the tree of life.



    ==========================================================================
    "The question was whether there were some lineages of plants that were
    more packed with winners or were full of losers we should be concerned
    about," Kress said.

    As it turned out, winners and losers were for the most part evenly
    distributed across plant orders. The exceptions came primarily from
    small lineages, which were more prone than lineages with many species to leaning heavily in favor of winners or losers, Krupnick said. Three of
    the lineages most at risk of extinction include cycads, the cypress family (which includes redwoods and junipers) and an ancient family of conifers
    called the araucariales which are today mostly found in New Caledonia.

    Branches of the plant evolutionary tree with few species and more losers
    than winners such as these have an elevated risk of being lost altogether, taking with them everything there is yet to learn about their biology
    and their lineage's genetic uniqueness.

    "Now and in the future, plants have to adapt to the environment humans
    have created or they will go extinct," Krupnick said. "Our results
    suggest that this means the plant communities of the future will be more homogenized than those of today." This increased homogeneity is likely
    to have serious consequences for ecosystems around the world as well as humanity. Losing plant diversity can drive a loss of animal diversity,
    Kress said, and make ecosystems less resilient in the face of hardship
    or change.

    "The list of winners shows that we've selected certain species that
    are useful to us, but as that pool of plants we have to select from
    decreases in the future, humanity will have many fewer options when we
    want to reforest the planet, find new medicines or foods, or develop
    new products," Kress said.

    Kress said he hopes that these lists will afford other researchers opportunities to look more in depth about why certain species of lineages
    are winning or losing in the age of humans and to identify the plants
    that are most in need of conservation.

    "It still looks green outside my window, and that can create the illusion
    that plants are doing well," Kress said. "But this study suggests we're
    on course for a big loss of plant diversity, and we better wake up."
    Funding and support for this research were provided by the Smithsonian.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Smithsonian. Note: Content may be
    edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. W. John Kress, Gary A. Krupnick. Lords of the biosphere: Plant
    winners
    and losers in the Anthropocene. PLANTS, PEOPLE, PLANET, 2022;
    DOI: 10.1002/ppp3.10252 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220310115039.htm

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