World's Largest Plant Survey Reveals Alarming Extinction Rate (nature.com) 95
The world's seed-bearing plants have been disappearing at a rate of nearly 3 species a year since 1900 -- which is up to 500 times higher than would be expected as a result of natural forces alone, according to the largest survey yet of plant extinctions. From a report: The project looked at more than 330,000 species and found that plants on islands and in the tropics were the most likely to be declared extinct. Trees, shrubs and other woody perennials had the highest probability of disappearing regardless of where they were located. The results were published on 10 June in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The study provides valuable hard evidence that will help with conservation efforts, says Stuart Pimm, a conservation scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The survey included more plant species by an order of magnitude than any other study, he says. "Its results are enormously significant."
The work stems from a database compiled by botanist Rafael Govaerts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. Govaerts started the database in 1988 to track the status of every known plant species. As part of that project, he mined the scientific literature and created a list of seed-bearing plant species that were ruled extinct, and noted which species scientists had deemed to be extinct but were later rediscovered. In 2015, Govaerts teamed up with plant evolutionary biologist Aelys Humphreys at Stockholm University in Sweden and others to analyse the data. They compared extinction rates across different regions and characteristics such as whether the plants were annuals that regrow from seed each year or perennials that endure year after year. The researchers found that about 1,234 species had been reported extinct since the publication of Carl Linnaeus's compendium of plant species, Species Plantarum, in 1753. But more than half of those species were either rediscovered or reclassified as another living species, meaning 571 are still presumed extinct.
A map of plant extinctions produced by the team shows that flora in areas of high biodiversity and burgeoning human populations, such as Madagascar, the Brazilian rainforests, India and South Africa, are most at risk. Humphreys says that the rates of extinction in the tropics is beyond what researchers expect, even when they account for the increased diversity of species in those habitats. And islands are particularly sensitive because they are likely to contain species found nowhere else in the world and are especially susceptible to environmental changes, says Humphreys.
The work stems from a database compiled by botanist Rafael Govaerts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. Govaerts started the database in 1988 to track the status of every known plant species. As part of that project, he mined the scientific literature and created a list of seed-bearing plant species that were ruled extinct, and noted which species scientists had deemed to be extinct but were later rediscovered. In 2015, Govaerts teamed up with plant evolutionary biologist Aelys Humphreys at Stockholm University in Sweden and others to analyse the data. They compared extinction rates across different regions and characteristics such as whether the plants were annuals that regrow from seed each year or perennials that endure year after year. The researchers found that about 1,234 species had been reported extinct since the publication of Carl Linnaeus's compendium of plant species, Species Plantarum, in 1753. But more than half of those species were either rediscovered or reclassified as another living species, meaning 571 are still presumed extinct.
A map of plant extinctions produced by the team shows that flora in areas of high biodiversity and burgeoning human populations, such as Madagascar, the Brazilian rainforests, India and South Africa, are most at risk. Humphreys says that the rates of extinction in the tropics is beyond what researchers expect, even when they account for the increased diversity of species in those habitats. And islands are particularly sensitive because they are likely to contain species found nowhere else in the world and are especially susceptible to environmental changes, says Humphreys.
No, you're uneducated morons, you got nothing. (Score:3, Insightful)
"But since 1994, scientists have been introducing new plant species every year through genetic engineering"
Oh, a whole 1 a year? At that rate you can be the floral arrainger on humanity's tombstone. Nothing that scientists crudely create has been tested by natural selection over millions of years like nature.
AND we've destroyed the test bed.
You're uneducated.
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AND we've destroyed the test bed.
No we've merely modified it from its otherwise natural state. Life as a whole is pretty resilient and the planet has gone through multiple mass extinction events. Hell, there are even places like Chernobyl where there're species living because they became resistant to the radiation and can tolerate that new ecosystem.
Natural selection would continue on even if we do completely fuck up the planet in a way that causes another mass extinction event. I certainly hope that we don't, but I wouldn't be too worr
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It's all a part of Gods plan.
God's plan has most definitely not survived contact with the enemy. i.e. us.
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If we have children they will be born, live, and die in that same even more absolute and encompassing misery.
The one-percenters won't. They will, however, miss us when were gone. (ha-ha. Just kidding. No they won't).
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The one-percenters won't. They will, however, miss us when were gone. (ha-ha. Just kidding. No they won't).
Like they are going to clean their own toilets and cook their own food or anything?
Re: NO WORRIES GOP BROS! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% on board with stopping global warming, but this kind of halfassed horseshit isn't making it any easier to convince people who are still on the fence.
How about all the plastic garbage, the overfishing, the tree chopping, the industrial pollution and all the other crap the human race is busy doing just so they can drive bigger cars than they need?
Trying to find flowers (Score:3)
"[The scientist recalled] his own hunt through Cameroon to gather species of yellow-flowering begonias for DNA sequencing. De Vos visited several sites where records indicated that other researchers had collected the plants in decades past. But sometimes he would arrive at a site only to find a radically changed landscape."
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It's basically the opening scene from the movie arachnophobia, but a lot less exciting.
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But that's the best part. I don't think anyone wants the excitement of the opening scene from Arachnophobia to happen to them. I'll take uneventful trip to collect flower specimens over "I just became a spider's dinner." any day.
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Natural forces alone?? (Score:1)
Re: Natural forces alone?? (Score:1)
You're confusing two separate concepts. "Made by humans" differs from "human-made".
Take feces as an example. It's "made by humans", but is completely natural, because many other non-human organisms produce it, too.
Now consider something like a car. It's "human-made", because it very likely would not exist without the direction action of humans, and can be considered as not being natural.
There's a big difference between the two.
Re:Natural forces alone?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans are as natural as an meteor collision, and have similar impact.
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Humans are as natural as an meteor collision.
So, completely natural.
Of course, what would it even mean for something to be unnatural?
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So, homo sapiens sapiens is not considered "natural"? Why not? We're just another mammal, a bit more successful than most....
It is entirely possible to be too successful (and as a result, too arrogant) for your own good.
Re:Natural forces alone?? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, homo sapiens sapiens is not considered "natural"?
The species is. Its tools and their effects are not considered natural, no.
Why not?
Because, by definition, anything created by human beings is artificial. Artificial and natural are mutually exclusive terms. If your question is, "why not call things made by human beings natural and do away with the word 'artificial,'" well that's because it's very useful to be able to distinguish between the categories. They have very different properties. If I tell you I have an artificial leg, you can be 100% certain it is not the leg I was born with. That would have been my natural leg.
Or take how it is used in the summary: "The world's seed-bearing plants have been disappearing at a rate of nearly 3 species a year since 1900 -- which is up to 500 times higher than would be expected as a result of natural forces alone." Because we know the definition of natural, this is clearly stipulating that without human intervention we would expect to see a 500 times lower rate of seed-bearing plants disappearing. You can argue whether you think that is true or whether it matters or whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but arguing that humans are doing it *and* it's natural completely ignores the definition of the word.
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So, homo sapiens sapiens is not considered "natural"? Why not?
It's a useful distinction to make between things that we, as a species, have control over and are responsible for vs. things that occur without any human intervention. Unlike the rest of nature we are self-aware and capable of making far more complex and reasoned decisions than any other creature. Since we can do this, by some argument, we could be said to be "unnatural" because nature has never seen anything like us. Let's hope we can use that capability to make some intelligent decisions.
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Humans are not in balance with the rest of the ecosystem.
That's not at all unusual for a new species. Homo sapiens is not that old, and there are many environments where humans have lived only a few hundred or a few thousand years. So that part is not unnatural exactly, but humans' impact is disproportionate compared to any other species, and the biosphere may be very severely out of balance until there is a correction.
So human impact is not completely novel but it is a special case.
How many new species naturally evolve each year? (Score:2)
Humans like to catalog and keep everything in a zoo, but mother nature purges the weak.
Smells like FUD
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This is like saying we just gotta keep shooting people until people become immune to bullets..
Sounds like a Portal test that GlaDos designed.
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The scientists who do this kind of work (myself included) are aware of the rate of speciation, thanks.
Re:How many new species naturally evolve each year (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans like to catalog and keep everything in a zoo, but mother nature purges the weak.
Smells like FUD
Mother Nature purges the stupid as well, creatures like upright walking hairless primates who don't understand what the wholesale destruction of biodiversity really means.
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Re:How many new species naturally evolve each year (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, species take 10s of thousands of years to differentiate into their niches, thrive there happily for 10s of thousands of more, and then die off within 100 years of us figuring out how to drill oil. Nothing to see here, move along.
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Or the good old chainsaw.
history will not be kind (Score:5, Insightful)
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Centuries from now, historians will document that scientists understood we were clearly causing the mass extinction, but humanity as a whole was unable to summon the will and organization to mitigate it.
Ya, probably all while they're gutting other planets in other star systems for raw materials for a Dyson swarm.
There was a message in the pattern (Score:2)
After further analysis, encoded in the extinction events was a note: "So long, and thanks for all the manure."
Missing reference point (Score:1)
Is this one wrong, too? (Score:2, Informative)
A few months ago, we were told that a study in Puerto Rico showed an "alarming rate of extinction" of insects and frogs. Problem is, the study was wrong [pnas.org]. So how about some independent eyes on this one first (not just "peer reviewed" which means essentially nothing these days), before we go all hyper OMGTHEWORLDISENDING! on it...
Also curious why the editors here didn't post that paper showing things aren't that bad? Maybe because they want to sell the gloom-and-doom scenario because - angst sells?
Re:Is this one wrong, too? (Score:5, Informative)
It should also be noted that it is only a portion of a much larger article that addresses the extinctions of insect species found here [elsevier.com].
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So maybe in this particular instance there is a problem.
On the other hand I'm really skeptical of the disingenuos "omg- so alarmist!" attitude.
there's 7 billion people on the planet. We've shown over and over again our inclination to destroy things. we have destroyed vast areas of wilderness and wild habitat. Look how little of the US constitutes areas as set asides, and the fucking Republicans are trying to drive back on that.
we continue to destroy, destroy, destroy, and most of the time it's for the almi
Scale (Score:2)
I like that the article is not overly dramatizing the issue, and a 500-fold increase is troubling, but frankly I'm amazed that it's as low as 3 species per year, even considering that that's limited to just seed-bearing plants.
Extinction only? (Score:2)
How many new species have been found? (Score:2)