A comprehensive report has been published in the scientific journal New Phytologist, a collaborative effort involving over 400 researchers from 40 countries. The new discoveries are based on a project by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which involved the digitization of 7.4 million herbarium specimens.
For decades, and even centuries, unique specimens were kept hidden away in closed boxes and cabinets. Now, their digital copies are accessible to scientists anywhere in the world. Machine learning algorithms enable the classification of complex plants that have very minor differences between them.
For example, comparing digital collections in Costa Rica led to a nearly 20% increase in the known diversity of local fungi. Meanwhile, 37,000 specimens from Madagascar, after being digitized, helped researchers save a local ecosystem.
The digitized archives have also made it possible to track the effects of global warming. An analysis of 8 million herbarium specimens showed that over the past century, the flowering time of plants has shifted by an average of 2.5 days per decade. In some regions of India, the synchrony of flowering among major tree species has sharply declined, from 79% in the 1950s to 47% in the 1990s. This disrupts the life cycles of pollinating insects and puts forests at risk.
Despite these significant achievements, scientists warn that the true scale of plant extinction is still greatly underestimated. Nearly 30,000 plant species are currently threatened with complete extinction, and some may disappear even before they receive an official name.
The creation of a global genome library offers botanists a chance to preserve Earth’s biodiversity.
About the Author
