ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, LEONSBOX
In the past 250 years, 571 plant species have gone extinct, according to a study published yesterday (June 10) in Nature Ecology & Evolution. This figure is four times more than the number of plant extinctions on record at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Switzerland, and the researchers suggest that many more species losses remain uncounted.
“It is way more than we knew and way more than should have gone extinct,” coauthor Maria Vorontsova of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK tells The Guardian. “It is frightening not just because of the 571 number but because I think that is a gross underestimate.”
Compiling data from the literature, international databases, and museum specimens, Vorontsova and her colleagues surveyed more than 330,000 species to document the losses. That’s more than 10 times the number of species included by any other survey, ...
