I chose this article from 2000 on Human-caused environmental changes and loss of plant diversity. This relates back to many topics we will be discussing in our lectures including the use of biofuels, impacts of mining, ozone depletion, and most importantly climate change. The goal of this paper was to examine the impact of these effects within the next 50-100 years. Now, 22 years later, these human activities have definitely negatively impacted the earth and the plant species that it supports. The researchers looked at the environmental constraints in plant communities which include resource limitation, recruitment limitation, predators and pathogens, physical disturbances, and temperature and climate change. The evolutionary responses to these global changes as predicted by the paper included light and dispersal ability to become a major limiting factor in fast-growing and rapidly dispersing plant species. They predicted a great loss of significant plant diversity based on statistical analysis that would leave many niches empty and increase weedier species. I have attached the paper below, if you would like to have a read. It was very eye-opening that many of the things occurring today were already predicted 2 decades ago. This also laid down the importance of carefully examining what has been predicted now for the foreseeable future.
Below are some of the predictions that the article made based on dispersal capacity and light availability in many plants
Morodoluwa Akin-Fajiye, Amanda C. Schmidt, Lauchlan H. Fraser, Soil nutrients and variation in biomass rather than native species richness influence introduced plant richness in a semi-arid grassland, Basic and Applied Ecology, 10.1016/j.baae.2021.03.002, 53, (62-73), (2021)
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 