New study shines light on adaptability of desert plants
Study involved more than 130 000 individual plant trait measurements
Groundbreaking research has shed light on plant adaptations in arid regions.
What do we know about how plants have adapted to extreme climate conditions in the desert regions of the world? And how will these plants respond to emerging threats, such as increasing drought conditions, grazing pressure and desertification?
These are the questions posed by a group of 120 scientists from 27 countries when they conducted a large-scale international study to understand how plants found in drylands have adapted to these extreme habitats.
The unexpected answers to these questions were recently published in the scientific journal Nature, in an article titled 'Unforeseen plant phenotypic diversity in a dry and grazed world'.
Drylands are areas facing severe water scarcity (with an average annual rainfall of 150 mm to 250 mm) and include less humid, semi-dry, arid and extremely dry ecosystems such as the Mediterranean landscape, steppes, savannas and deserts.
Eight-year endeavour
Drylands cover 45% of the earth’s land area and are home to a third of the world’s human population.
Although an estimated two billion people rely on these drylands for their livelihoods, relatively few studies have been conducted to investigate how plant diversity in these areas has adapted to extreme climate conditions.
Biggest study of its kind
Professor Thulani Makhalanyani from the University of Stellenbosch’s Department of Microbiology and the School of Data Science and Computer Thinking was part of the team that, over the past eight years, has collected samples from several hundred dryland areas across six continents. This enabled them to analyse over 1 300 sets of observations from more than 300 plant species – a first on this scale.
The scientists compiled a total of 1 347 complete sets of trait observations for analysis.
Particular attention was given to characterising the elemental composition of the plants, that is, the diversity of chemical elements and trace elements (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and zinc) present in plants, as these often undocumented traits have a significant influence on how plants function.
The study involved more than 130 000 individual plant trait measurements in total.
Plant loneliness
They found that plants in dry zones adopt many different adaptation strategies and that this diversity increases surprisingly as the levels of drought stress rise. In other words, beyond a certain threshold, there was an 88.1% increase in the diversity of plant traits.
According to an international press release published on EurekAlert, it appears that the isolation of these plants (referred to as the 'plant loneliness syndrome') in drier zones has reduced competition between species, allowing them to express a diversity of forms and functions that is globally unique, showing twice the diversity found in more temperate zones.
This adaptable diversity may also reflect complex evolutionary histories dating back to the initial colonisation of land habitats by plants more than 500 million years ago, when these habitats provided extreme conditions for living organisms.
These important zones are now directly threatened by increasing drought conditions, grazing pressure and desertification. Scientists must understand how plants respond to such pressures before they can determine the potential future evolution of these fragile ecosystems in terms of biodiversity and functioning.
Makhalanyane says they are excited to finally publish the results of the study.
“This project has provided remarkable insights into functional diversity in deserts, particularly from those regions on our continent that have not yet been sufficiently studied.”
These are the questions posed by a group of 120 scientists from 27 countries when they conducted a large-scale international study to understand how plants found in drylands have adapted to these extreme habitats.
The unexpected answers to these questions were recently published in the scientific journal Nature, in an article titled 'Unforeseen plant phenotypic diversity in a dry and grazed world'.
Drylands are areas facing severe water scarcity (with an average annual rainfall of 150 mm to 250 mm) and include less humid, semi-dry, arid and extremely dry ecosystems such as the Mediterranean landscape, steppes, savannas and deserts.
Eight-year endeavour
Drylands cover 45% of the earth’s land area and are home to a third of the world’s human population.
Although an estimated two billion people rely on these drylands for their livelihoods, relatively few studies have been conducted to investigate how plant diversity in these areas has adapted to extreme climate conditions.
Biggest study of its kind
Professor Thulani Makhalanyani from the University of Stellenbosch’s Department of Microbiology and the School of Data Science and Computer Thinking was part of the team that, over the past eight years, has collected samples from several hundred dryland areas across six continents. This enabled them to analyse over 1 300 sets of observations from more than 300 plant species – a first on this scale.
The scientists compiled a total of 1 347 complete sets of trait observations for analysis.
Particular attention was given to characterising the elemental composition of the plants, that is, the diversity of chemical elements and trace elements (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and zinc) present in plants, as these often undocumented traits have a significant influence on how plants function.
The study involved more than 130 000 individual plant trait measurements in total.
Plant loneliness
They found that plants in dry zones adopt many different adaptation strategies and that this diversity increases surprisingly as the levels of drought stress rise. In other words, beyond a certain threshold, there was an 88.1% increase in the diversity of plant traits.
According to an international press release published on EurekAlert, it appears that the isolation of these plants (referred to as the 'plant loneliness syndrome') in drier zones has reduced competition between species, allowing them to express a diversity of forms and functions that is globally unique, showing twice the diversity found in more temperate zones.
This adaptable diversity may also reflect complex evolutionary histories dating back to the initial colonisation of land habitats by plants more than 500 million years ago, when these habitats provided extreme conditions for living organisms.
These important zones are now directly threatened by increasing drought conditions, grazing pressure and desertification. Scientists must understand how plants respond to such pressures before they can determine the potential future evolution of these fragile ecosystems in terms of biodiversity and functioning.
Makhalanyane says they are excited to finally publish the results of the study.
“This project has provided remarkable insights into functional diversity in deserts, particularly from those regions on our continent that have not yet been sufficiently studied.”
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