this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Biodiversity

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A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.

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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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Trees can’t get up and walk away, but forests can (www.sciencenews.org)
submitted 4 weeks ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/biodiversity@mander.xyz
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While individual trees can’t cross rivers and climb mountains, entire forests can. And climate change is making their journeys treacherous.

“Trees have been migrating forever,” says Leslie Brandt, an ecologist formerly with the U.S. Forest Service in St. Paul, Minn. During the last ice age, when an ice sheet covered most of Canada and the northern United States, many tree species took refuge in warmer, southern climates. As northern habitats got colder, seeds thrived in the warmer south. More new trees grew on the southern edges of forests, while older trees up north died out. Slowly, forests migrated, moving around 100 to 500 meters a year, Brandt says.

But now, human-caused climate change is altering habitats faster than forests can move. Rising oceans are threatening coastal mangrove forests worldwide. Higher temperatures in Canada are making it difficult for white spruce to grow. And drier conditions in the American Southwest are harming pinyon pines.

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