Plant species that are not useful to humans are going extinct, says study
Several species of plants are going extinct as people don’t need them (representative image).
Most of the plant species are going extinct in the world as people don’t need them, found researchers.
More than 80,000 plant species have been categorised worldwide.
The plant communities of the future will largely depend on humans and will be hugely homogenised than those of today, as per the paper, which was published in the journal ‘Plants, People, Planet’.
The findings show a dark picture of the threat to biodiversity. The study covered less than 30% of all known plant species. It is like a “wake-up call”, say the researchers, who highlighted the need for more work in this field.
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There are 6,749 plants, which are winners and helpful to humans, such as rice, corn, wheat and other crops. They cover 40% of the surface of the planet. There are 164 plants, which are winners and but not useful to humans. These include weedy species like kudzu.
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About 20,290 species of plants have been categorised as losers as they are mostly not useful to humans. They are already recognised as endangered species like magnolia tree from Haiti, etc.
The scientists have also branded 26,002 species as potential losers, and 18,664 species as potential winners. These last two categories are plants, which are currently considered neutral. And 571 plant species have already gone extinct.
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John Kress, botany curator emeritus, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the paper, said, “We’re actually beginning to quantify what’s going to make it through the bottleneck of the Anthropocene, in terms of numbers. It’s not the future, it’s happening. The bottleneck is starting to happen right now. And I think that’s part of the wake-up call that we are trying to give here. It’s something we might be able to slow down a little bit, but it’s happening.”
(With inputs from agencies)