Amidst the news of threats to world environment, a happy tidings has emerged. If the reports of online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are to be believed then tropical plants are better equipped to tackle environmental changes, as they can extract nitrogen from a variety of sources.
A team of researchers that was lead by Benjamin Houlton of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology found that unlike temperate species, tropical plants are capable of drawing nitrogen from a variety of sources. The finding reinforces the fact that tropical species will prove more adaptable to climate change.
Benjamin Houlton said:
When it comes to nitrogen, the tropical plants we studied behave like kids at a pizza party-they may prefer pepperoni, but if only plain cheese is available, they’ll still have a slice. This result gives a glimmer of hope that tropical ecosystems may have the capacity to adjust to certain aspects of climate change. It really is quite striking; once the soil gets wet and nitrate drops below a certain threshold, the tropical plants all begin using ammonium in near-perfect unison.
The study was conducted on Hawaiian island of Maui, where it was found that nitrate lies in abundance in dry areas, while ammonium is available in wet areas and tropical plants are capable of using both nitrogen sources as per the availability. And the same feature wouldn’t let these plants wither away during inclement weather conditions.
However, more testing would be required before it can be said that phenomenon is true for entire ecosystem.
Source: Mongabay