Nature & Environment
Plants Out-Survive Animals Through Mass Extinction Events
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Feb 17, 2015 10:37 AM EST
When it comes to surviving mass extinctions, plants do a lot better than animals. Scientists have taken a closer look at the mass extinctions over the course of Earth's history and have found that plants are especially resilient during these events.
For over 400 million years, plants have played an essential role in almost all terrestrial environments and covered most of the world's surface. During this long time period, extinction events have impacted Earth's ecosystems and its biodiversity.
In order to better understand how plants fared during these extinction events, the researchers examined more than 20,000 plant fossils. This revealed a bit more about the effects of these mass extinction events on plant diversity. Surprisingly, these events had very different impacts among plant groups. In fact, negative rates of diversification, which means that more species died out than new species were formed, were never sustained through long time periods.
"In the plant kingdom, mass extinction events can be seen as opportunities for turnover leading to renewed biodiversity," said Daniele Silvestro, the lead author of the new study, in a news release.
Most striking were the effects of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, which was caused by an asteroid impact off of the Mexican coast about 66 million years ago. This impact had huge effects on terrestrial habitats and led to the extinction of all dinosaurs, except birds. Surprisingly, though, it had only limited effects on plant diversity.
"Mass extinctions are often thought as a bad thing, but they have been crucial in changing the world into how we know it today," said Alexandre Antonelli, senior author of the new study. "By studying such extreme events we are trying to learn which groups of organisms and features are more sensitive to changes, so that we can apply this knowledge to protect biodiversity in the face of ongoing climate change and human deterioration of natural ecosystems."
The findings are published in the journal New Phytologist.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
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First Posted: Feb 17, 2015 10:37 AM EST
When it comes to surviving mass extinctions, plants do a lot better than animals. Scientists have taken a closer look at the mass extinctions over the course of Earth's history and have found that plants are especially resilient during these events.
For over 400 million years, plants have played an essential role in almost all terrestrial environments and covered most of the world's surface. During this long time period, extinction events have impacted Earth's ecosystems and its biodiversity.
In order to better understand how plants fared during these extinction events, the researchers examined more than 20,000 plant fossils. This revealed a bit more about the effects of these mass extinction events on plant diversity. Surprisingly, these events had very different impacts among plant groups. In fact, negative rates of diversification, which means that more species died out than new species were formed, were never sustained through long time periods.
"In the plant kingdom, mass extinction events can be seen as opportunities for turnover leading to renewed biodiversity," said Daniele Silvestro, the lead author of the new study, in a news release.
Most striking were the effects of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, which was caused by an asteroid impact off of the Mexican coast about 66 million years ago. This impact had huge effects on terrestrial habitats and led to the extinction of all dinosaurs, except birds. Surprisingly, though, it had only limited effects on plant diversity.
"Mass extinctions are often thought as a bad thing, but they have been crucial in changing the world into how we know it today," said Alexandre Antonelli, senior author of the new study. "By studying such extreme events we are trying to learn which groups of organisms and features are more sensitive to changes, so that we can apply this knowledge to protect biodiversity in the face of ongoing climate change and human deterioration of natural ecosystems."
The findings are published in the journal New Phytologist.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone