Pattern found in world’s rainforests where 2% of species make up 50% of trees (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/biodiversity@mander.xyz

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Just 2% of rainforest tree species account for 50% of the trees found in tropical forests across Africa, the Amazon and south-east Asia, a new study has found.

Mirroring patterns found elsewhere in the natural world, researchers have discovered that a few tree species dominate the world’s major rainforests, with thousands of rare species making up the rest.

Led by University College London researchers and published in the Nature journal, the international collaboration of 356 scientists uncovered almost identical patterns of tree diversity across the world’s rainforests, which are the most biodiverse places on the planet. The researchers estimate that just 1,000 species account for half of Earth’s 800 billion trees in tropical rainforests, with 46,000 species making up the remainder.

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

If we focus on understanding the commonest tree species, we can probably predict how the whole forest will respond to today’s rapid environmental changes,” said the lead author, Declan Cooper, from the UCL centre for biodiversity and environment research.

The team of scientists demonstrated that while African tropical forests have fewer total species compared with the Amazon and south-east Asia, their diversity follows the same pattern.

They plan to focus future work on identifying the potential rule, given the geographic differences of the forests they studied.

African tropical forests experience a drier, cooler climate than the two other regions, while those in south-east Asia are spread across disconnected islands.

The senior author, Prof Simon Lewis of UCL’s geography school and the University of Leeds, said: “We wanted to look at tropical forests in a new way.

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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024

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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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