This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Decades of warming have relaxed cold-temperature constraints on mountain plant distribution and increased species numbers on mountaintops. An international research team led by scientists from the University of Vienna, together with BOKU University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, now shows that these changes also create a rising number of losers.
The disappearance of plants from summits can take decades but has accelerated over the past 20 years. Rising biodiversity is therefore only part of the story and neglects an important aspect of recent summit vegetation dynamics. Until a few decades ago, short vegetation periods, low temperature sums and year-round frost risk made alpine landscapes difficult for many species of European flora to colonize.
However, accelerating climate warming has relaxed these constraints. Species have therefore started to expand their ranges upward, and mountaintop vegetation has consequently become more species-rich. However, the research team demonstrates that this apparent success story also has a downside: While total species numbers are rising, loss rates are increasing, too, and the losses primarily affect specialists of high-elevation ecosystems.
The scientists analyzed the vegetation of 62 European summits that were surveyed for their species composition four times between 2001 and 2022 as part of the global monitoring initiative GLORIA. The data demonstrate that the percentage of species not re-detected increased with each survey. Species with a center of distribution above the focal summit were overrepresented in the group of lost species.
The paper is published in the journal Science. The results of the study suggest that climate warming drives these local extinctions. "The data clearly show that species were more likely to disappear from summits which experienced stronger warming.
This correlation was even stronger than the temporal trend," explains first author Johannes Wessely from the University of Vienna. In addition, local extinction likelihood increases toward the lower elevational margin of current species distributions. "Put differently, when species already grow on warmer-than-average sites they become more sensitive to further temperature increase," adds Harald Pauli, the coordinator of GLORIA at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and BOKU University.
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