Date: January 4, 2017
Source: Senckenberg Research
Institute and Natural History Museum
When plant species disappear due
to climate change, this may lead to the subsequent loss of various animal
species. Insects which depend on interactions with specific plant partners are
particularly threatened. Plants, in contrast, will be less sensitive to the
disappearance of their animal partners, according to an international team led
by scientists from Senckenberg. Their study was published recently in the
scientific journal “Nature Communications.”
One plant species that will be
negatively affected by climate change is the harebell. It is an essential food
source for a specialized species of leaf-cutter bee, Chelostoma rapunculi. Like
all animal and plant species both are part of complex ecological networks, in
which interacting species are interlinked. “The local extinction of animals and
plants can lead to a chain reaction of other extinction events in these
networks, e.g., as a result of climate change,” says Dr. Matthias Schleuning of
the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre.
Together with his colleagues, he
modeled the vulnerability of more than 700 European plant and animal species to
future climate change. For the first time, they combined these models with data
on interactions of plants with their animal pollinators and seed dispersers.
The simulation indicates that the initial spark for extinction cascades as a
result of climate change mostly originates from plant species and is indirectly
transferred to animal species.
This domino effect is a
particular threat to animal species that only interact with a small number of
plant species, since they are more sensitive to climate change than
generalists. “In the future, these specialists will therefore face a double
threat. According to our analyses, they are restricted to a narrow climatic
niche and are therefore also directly threatened by rising temperatures in the
future,” explains Dr. Christian Hof, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate
Research Centre. “Chelostoma rapunculi is, thus, threatened directly, due to
climate change, as well as indirectly, due to the disappearance of important
food plants such as the harebell”, according to co-author Dr. Jochen Fründ of
the University of Freiburg.
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