Natural ecosystems comprise groups of species capable of living in the specific conditions of a biological system.
Natural ecosystems comprise groups of species capable of living in the specific conditions of a biological system. However, if we visit a specific natural area, we will not find all the species capable of living in it. The proportion of species that could live in a specific location but do not do so is known as dark diversity, a concept coined in 2011 by researchers at the University of Tartu (Estonia). Research involving the UPV/EHU has now discovered that this dark diversity increases in regions with greater human activity. The study was recently published in Nature, one of the world's most influential journals.
The study, in which the Biodiversity and Evolution Research Group of the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Science and Technology participated, was carried out within the framework of the international DarkDivNet network and focused on nearly 5,500 locations in 119 regions across the world. In each location studied, the research teams analysed all the plant species present in different habitats to identify dark diversity. This innovative methodology for studying biodiversity made it possible to estimate the potential plant diversity in each study site and compare it with the plants actually present.
The results reveal a hitherto unknown effect of human activities on biodiversity. In regions with little human impact, natural habitats contain on average one third of the potential species, mainly because not all the species can spread throughout the area naturally. By contrast, in regions with a high human impact, habitats tend to include only one fifth of the potential species. Traditional methods for estimating biodiversity, based on counting the number of species present without taking potential species into consideration, tend to underestimate the true effect of human impact.
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Idoia Biurrunresearching during the pandemic (Photo Credit: UPV/EHU)
