New research on the effects of climate change on plants may lead to better conservation strategies.

A new study shows that the disappearance of plant species that are particularly vulnerable to climate change may lead to more problems than previous studies. If confirmed, these findings will help to provide information for conservation strategies and make more accurate predictions for future ecosystems.

The three-year study focused on a meadow called Coyote Ridge near the central coast of California. Researchers are currently conducting a follow-up study to determine whether these findings are more widely applicable to other ecosystems around the world.

As we all know, species extinction will bring problems to the environment and human beings, such as reducing the benefits of forest water filtration or reducing the amount of feed for cattle on the grassland. In order to understand the overall impact of low biodiversity in the ecosystem, ecologists usually conduct field experiments of randomly selected species exclusion. However, the assistant professor of comprehensive biology at the University of Texas at Austin and the professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz took a more intentional approach and showed what would happen if the species most likely to be threatened by climate change really disappeared. This is a scene they call the loss of real species.

Wolf said: "From previous experiments, we already know that the loss of biodiversity will have a major impact on the ecosystem." When we incorporate more realistic aspects into our research, we find that these influences tend to intensify. "

Scientists want to know what will happen to the health of California grassland in the future with the decrease of biodiversity and climate change, especially with more frequent droughts. They set up an experimental field near San Jose, where there is a typical mixture of native plants, excluding those plants that are sensitive to drought, to determine what would happen if ecologists predicted that the plants most affected by drought really disappeared. In order to compare this more realistic method with the traditional method of randomly selecting which species to exclude, they also used the traditional method to build plots nearby. Then they conducted experiments for three years in rainy season, normal year and dry year.

In many ecosystems, it is difficult to know which species are more or less likely to become extinct. On this grassland, the research team used 30 years of plant survey data sets to determine which species performed poorly in dry years, and conducted real species loss experiments based on these data. Wolf and her research team found that if there were no plants sensitive to drought, the remaining plants in the real plot would grow less, which is the so-called corresponding plants with lower productivity than the loss of random species in the traditional plot.

Even in dry years, the drought-tolerant plants left on the land where real species have disappeared are not as big as those grown on more traditional land.

Zavalletta said: "We are building a framework to understand the meaning of species disappearance." This gives conservation managers the opportunity to predict and manage ecosystems to protect some species and mitigate the decline of others. "

In the experiment, another key ecosystem function, the ability to resist invasive species, changes greatly every year. This shows that with the persistence of climate change, it is more difficult to predict what the future ecosystem may look like.

Zavalletta said: "The change of ecosystem function is not necessarily a bad thing." But it does mean that the risk of the system crossing the threshold and entering a new stable state is greater. For example, you may have a year of heavy rainfall, which makes many invasive species come in and some local species disappear. Then the next year, when the weather is dry again, the system may be abnormal. "

The researchers are currently conducting a follow-up study to determine whether the same results can be applied to other ecosystems.

Wolf said: "I think this kind of research will help to determine the protection priorities and help us predict the future development direction." Species have an important influence in the ecosystem, and its influence can be quantified. If some species disappear, the ecosystem will change quantitatively. Some of these changes may not be obvious to most people, but many may have a significant impact on mankind. "