Time does tell
Thursday, March 1st, 2007The interactions among plants and insects in a field turns out to be a good measure of the impact of global warming, and the outlook is not promising. Things looked good early on in a field study of grasslands that simulated coming climate change. For two years production and diversity increased. But after five years the grass took over and plant diversity fell by half. Flowering plants in particular were suppressed, leaving insects with far less food.