British scientists from the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in London have warned about the risk of extinction of all 328,565 species of flowering plants known to exist on our planet. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine New Phytology (NewPhyt).
Botanists used the BART artificial intelligence (AI) model trained on a dataset of more than 53 thousand plants on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. AI allowed us to determine the likely status of the remaining 275,004 species. Possible threats include climate change, human activities, and various yet unknown factors.
Scientists used data from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants, the IUCN Red List and regularly updated human impact datasets to model the risk of extinction of entire species.
“Assessing the health of a plant can literally change the fate of its species, especially if it is thought to be endangered or remains critically endangered. By this action the risk of extinction of the species is reduced. In the absence of IUCN Red List assessments for all plant species, our predictions are limited to which species are at risk of extinction.” “It’s also the first time we’ve made a prediction for every species,” said Dr Eimear Nick Lugadha, head of the study.
Previous scientists warned We are at risk of extinction of half of the world’s medicinal plants.
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Source: Gazeta
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