Artificial intelligence and digitisation have been identified as a potential turning point in the “race against extinction” faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a new report.<\/p>\n
A new report from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London suggested that threats to plant species could now be identified much quicker.<\/p>\n
Speaking to RT\u00c9’s News at One, Executive Director of Science at Kew Dr Alexandre Antonelli said this work normally took a long time to complete.<\/p>\n
“Because people until now would have to jump on a plane and come all the way to queue to study specimens that have been stored in cupboards and boxes for centuries.<\/p>\n
“Now by just going online, anyone anywhere can access that information and speed up that conservation and research work, which is so important to our lives on Earth,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dr Antonelli said that 45% of all flowering plants are currently at risk of extinction.<\/p>\n
“Our estimates now predicted about 45% of all plants, the flowering plants, are at risk of extinction. They may no longer be with us at the end of the century.<\/p>\n
“It’s almost half of all the species we see around us,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dr Antonelli added: “But in particular, in tropical regions, which are so diverse, many species are only found in very narrowly distributed ranges, like a mountain valley or a particular patch of rainforest.<\/p>\n
“Protecting them is not only to safeguard our own future, but also all the other species that depend on them.”<\/p>\n
Dr Antonelli said that the research also focused on fungi, which he described as “the next frontier of biodiversity research”.<\/p>\n
“We now have documented about a bit more than 100,000 species, but we know that the real number is somewhere around 2.5 million.<\/p>\n
“We’ve identified and scientifically described less than 7% or so of all fungal species on the planet,” he said.<\/p>\n
“No one cared about that green mold growing on bread until Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, which then saved hundreds of billions of lives.<\/p>\n
Dr Antonelli added: “Every single species of fungus could provide humankind with incredible benefits in terms of, again, source of food, but also medicine.<\/p>\n
“By losing them, we would also lose those opportunities in the future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence and digitisation have been identified as a potential turning point in the “race against extinction” faced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-503562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}