Study: Fast-Growing Plants More Adaptable

Plants with short life cycles can adapt to changes in climate in just a few years, University of California-Irvine scientists say.

The finding suggests that fast-growing plants — such as weeds — could handle global warming better than slower growing plants, such as redwoods, the university said in a news release.

Some species evolve fast enough to keep up with environmental change, said Arthur Weis, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Global warming may increase the pace of this change so that certain species may have difficulty keeping up.

Weis and others studied field mustard, collecting seeds before a five-year drought and after the drought. The plants were divided into groups receiving different amounts of water that simulated precipitation ranging from drought to very wet conditions. In all cases, the post-drought generation flowered earlier.

Weis is organizing Project Baseline, a national effort to collect and preserve seeds from plant populations.

Because of global warming, the evolution explosion is already under way, Weis said. If we act now, we’ll have the tools necessary to determine in the future how species respond to climate change.

The study was in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.