Mutualistic interactions reshuffle the effects of climate change on plants across the tree of life

Jordi Bascompte, María B. García, Raúl Ortega, Enrico L. Rezende, Samuel Pironon
2019 Science Advances  
Climatically induced local species extinctions may trigger coextinction cascades, thus driving many more species to extinction than originally predicted by species distribution models. Using seven pollination networks across Europe that include the phylogeny and life history traits of plants, we show a substantial variability across networks in climatically predicted plant extinction—and particularly the subsequent coextinction—rates, with much higher values in Mediterranean than Eurosiberian
more » ... tworks. While geographic location best predicts the probability of a plant species to be driven to extinction by climate change, subsequent coextinctions are best predicted by the local network of interactions. These coextinctions not only increase the total number of plant species being driven to extinction but also add a bias in the way the major taxonomic and functional groups are pruned.
doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav2539 pmid:31106269 pmcid:PMC6520021 fatcat:3yxf5xk3j5fwviho23y4zqe464