It may sound strange, but it's true: the Eastern European steppes have the same number of plant species as the Amazon rainforest.
This is seen only when species are enumerated in tiny sampling areas rather than hectares of land.
An international research team led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig has now demonstrated how much estimates of plant diversity change when the sampling area ranges from a few square meters to hectares.
Their findings were published in the journal Wildlife Communications and might be used to develop new and more customized nature protection strategies.
High plant diversity in eastern Europe
The researchers examined a dataset of over 170,000 plant plots from all of the Earth's climatic zones in their study, as per ScienceDaily.
The data includes information on all of the plant species discovered at a site as well as the coordinates of the region under research.
The information was obtained from iDiv's globally unique vegetation database "sPlot."
Most global biodiversity studies are undertaken on a somewhat broad scale, such as at a state or provincial level.
"We wanted to see how much the results differed when smaller regions were evaluated," explained MLU Professor Helge Bruelheide.
The scientists employed artificial intelligence to analyze the link between the number of plant species and the size of the study area, among other things.
Their research revealed that there are areas on Earth where focusing on large study areas only provides a limited understanding of the distribution of biodiversity: for example, in the steppes of Eastern Europe, Siberia, and the Alpine countries of Europe, small areas can have relatively high biodiversity.
The significant biodiversity disparity between the tropics, such as the Amazon, and temperate temperature zones essentially disappears at tiny spatial scales.
The same is true for the African tropics, which were previously thought to be an exception in the tropical plant world.
"We questioned why this shouldn't also apply to Western Africa," added Dr. Francesco Maria Sabatini, who conducted the study at MLU and is now an assistant professor at the University of Bologna.
According to Sabatini, the distribution of plant species varies substantially across the African tropics. Because these species are widely spread, they are not usually reported when a limited sampling region is studied.
"Many tiny places are necessary to appropriately characterize Western Africa's great biodiversity," Sabatini continued.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity refers to the diversity or variability of living animals found on Earth, as well as other species that have gone extinct millions of years ago, as per Byju's.
The phrase biodiversity, often known as biological diversity, refers to the total number of distinct living species found in a given area, including microorganisms, plants, animals, and ecosystems such as coral reefs, woodlands, rainforests, deserts, and so on.
As a result, with biodiversity, every living species plays an equal function in the environment.
Plant variety on Earth is a vital resource for food, housing, and agriculture. Throughout human history, thousands of plant crop species have been recognized, produced, utilized, and relied on for food and agricultural output.
Bushes, grasses, herbs, shrubs, trees, vines, ferns, and mosses are examples of these plants.
Plants produce the oxygen we breathe and the carbohydrates that serve as the fundamental fuel for life through the process of photosynthesis.
There is a huge difference in biodiversity as a result of human and ecosystem interaction for specific food and development for human existence, regardless of pests, climatic variations, illnesses, droughts, or other unforeseen environmental catastrophes.
Currently, only a few crop species provide us with food and basic energy requirements for the whole human population worldwide. Rice, wheat, maize, cereals, pulses, and other crops fall under this category.
According to the requirement of this moderately small number of crops for global food security, it will be critical to maintain the continuity of these plant species in the face of increasing environmental stress and to provide opportunities for farmers to breed more crops that can be cultivated under unfavorable conditions, such as poor soil, salinity, drought, flooding, and extreme temperatures.
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