Tree Huggers

882 readers

13 users here now

A community to discuss, appreciate, and advocate for trees and forests. Please follow the SLRPNK instance rules, found here.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net

Tropical trees use social distancing to maintain biodiversity: Tropical forests often harbor hundreds of species of trees in a square mile, but scientists often struggle to understand how such a d (aussie.zone)

submitted 2 years ago by Treevan@aussie.zone to c/treehuggers@slrpnk.net

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/science/p/1171656

Tropical trees use social distancing to maintain biodiversity: Tropical forests often harbor hundreds of species of trees in a square mile, but scientists often struggle to understand how such a diversity of species can coexist.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-tropical-trees-social-distancing-biodiversity.html

#science #biology #botany #ecology #plants #computationalmodeling

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Tropical forests are a little hard to bring back to an original state due to the sheer number of species. No nursery can match it. Plus, the degradation means there are a lot of missing connections, most unknown, so restored forests around here always look a certain type of clinical. Improved, but there is always something missing.

We have over 5000 species in our little corner of Australia.

https://wetlandinfo.des.qld.gov.au/wetlands/facts-maps/wildlife/?AreaID=bioregion-southeast-queensland-seq&Kingdom=plants&SpeciesFilter=Native

I believe we have the opportunity to add some diversity but it all depends on what this climate does to us. Lost insects, lost birds, lost mammals, lost vectors for seeds etc. I've got a feeling that a lot of forests will simplify over time.

Land clearing remnant vegetation is something that needs to be quite punishable at this point. It's lost for basically forever.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeah I’m more thinking of lower diversity temperate/subtropical forests. You are probably correct that highly diverse tropical forests will be negatively impacted. Just trying to think of silver linings to the sorry state of our world.