How do alpine plants react to warmer climatic conditions? Due to their longevity, the plants may survive longer than expected in their habitats, but produce offspring that are increasingly maladapted. Population size may decrease faster than the contraction of the species range, as UZH researchers show using computer models. Scientists who wish to track the precise extinction risk of plant species must not only measure their dispersal, but also the densities of the local populations.
How do alpine plants react to warmer climatic conditions? Due to their longevity, the plants may survive longer than expected in their habitats, but produce offspring that are increasingly maladapted. Population size may decrease faster than the contraction of the species range, as UZH researchers show using computer models. Scientists who wish to track the precise extinction risk of plant species must not only measure their dispersal, but also the densities of the local populations.
For alpine plant species, climate change presents a special challenge: To escape increased greenhouse warming, the species have to move to a higher-altitude habitat. Due to the pyramidal structure of mountains, however, little surface area is available for this endeavor. To estimate the extinction risk of these plants, scientists have previously resorted to static models that insufficiently mapped the dynamic responses of flora to climate change.
Now, the team of Frédéric Guillaume of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences of the University of Zurich, in cooperation with research groups from Grenoble and Vienna, has developed a new model that takes eco-evolutionary mechanisms into consideration, therefore permitting more reliable predictions. The researchers have applied their model to four alpine plant species and used supercomputers to simulate the dispersal and adaptation of these species under three possible climate scenarios up to the year 2090.
Continue reading at University of Zurich.
Photo via University of Zurich.
