A flower's fight against extinction could be big climate change news

While biologists have worried about how rare species of plants and animals will cope with a rapidly warming climate, one West Coast flower is giving them hope after showing a remarkable ability to evolve with its surroundings.

In a new study in the journal Science published March 12, researchers tracked scarlet monkeyflower populations in Oregon and California for more than a decade and found that some of the flowers rapidly evolved in response to prolonged extreme drought.

“This study shows, for the first time in the wild, that some plant populations were able to evolve quickly enough to rebound from extreme drought,” explained study senior author Amy Angert, a botany and zoology professor at the University of British Columbia in an email to USA TODAY.

“These populations were on extinction trajectories because of the drought, but they were able to rescue themselves through rapid adaptation,” she said.

What is the scarlet monkeyflower?

The scarlet monkeyflower is part of a broader general group of monkeyflowers, many of which are found in California.

The perennial plant is named for its distinctive bloom that some thought resembled a monkey’s face. The scarlet flowers are a special boon for hummingbirds, because bees generally avoid red flowers, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. 

How was the study conducted?

Angert’s team began monitoring scarlet monkeyflower populations in 2010, before the most extreme drought in more than 10,000 years would begin in California in 2012. As the numbers dwindled, they realized that they had a time capsule, in the form of stored leaves and seeds collected pre-drought, according to a statement from the University of British Columbia.

When the drought hit, populations shrank and some went locally extinct, but others recovered. “Essentially what we found is that the populations that recovered are also the populations that evolved the fastest,” said study lead author Daniel Anstett, assistant professor of plant biology at Cornell University, in a statement.

“This is one species, but it’s a really good indicator for drought adaptation,” he said.

According to Anstett, previous studies had shown evolutionary rescue was possible in lab settings and in theoretical work, but this is the first study of natural populations to show decline due to climate change, evolution of climate adaptations across whole genomes and subsequent recovery.

Evolution to the rescue

The findings document what scientists call “evolutionary rescue” — when genetic adaptation allows populations to avoid extinction under severe environmental stress.

“The concern has been that climate change is happening too fast and its changes are too big for populations to be able to keep up through evolution, like running on a treadmill that continues to speed up even as you increase your pace,” Angert said. “This shows that at least some populations have the capacity to run fast enough through evolution to stay on the treadmill.”

“Our research shows that for monkeyflower, and likely similar wild plants, they can indeed keep pace and ‘rescue’ themselves from extreme climates by evolving.”

Why is the study significant?

Broadly, she said that it means that some estimates of biodiversity loss under climate change scenarios might be too dire if they don’t account for rapid adaptation.

“But, extreme caution is warranted — certainly not all species will have the same adaptive capacity,” Angert said. “Our finding that genetic diversity predicted recovery is one way that we might be able to start generalizing across other species.”

What do others say about the study?

This study “is really cool because it’s evolution caught in the act,” said Christy Edwards, a conservation geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. “It’s showing us the mechanism that’s allowing this species to evolve.”

Geneticists work in remote mountains, jungles, deserts and locations all over the globe to preserve genetic diversity.

The new study “in many ways kind of validates our existence,” said Edwards, who knows several of the authors but isn’t a close collaborator, and learned of the new study from USA TODAY. “It shows that a species is adapting and responding via rapid evolutionary change.”

“We’re trying to conserve genetic diversity, so that if something happens there could be variation that allows a species to adapt and persist,” she said.

Doyle Rice is a national correspondent for USA TODAY, with a focus on weather and climate. Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change, wildlife and the environment for USA TODAY. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.