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Don’t forget subterranean ecosystems in climate change agendas

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 458–459 (2021)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Climate change is a mounting threat to biodiversity, affecting multiple ecosystem services critical for human wellbeing, and hence the aim of most Sustainable Development Goals1. To address this herculean challenge, several global initiatives at the crossroads of science and policy have been advanced to implement bold and effective post-2020 biodiversity and climate change agendas2. For example, the Half-Earth Project (www.half-earthproject.org) or the Global Safety Net3 target 50% of Earth to be formally protected to halt biodiversity loss, reduce CO2 emissions and enhance natural carbon sequestration. To be optimally effective, these programmes should aim to include the maximum breadth of species, habitats and ecosystem services. Upon evaluating the diverse post-2020 conservation agendas, however, we were struck by a curious omission. Subterranean ecosystems — likely the most widespread non-marine environment on Earth4,5 — were unfortunately overlooked.

The omission of subterranean ecosystems from global biodiversity and climate change agendas marginalizes their ecological and economic importance. From a biodiversity point of view, these systems harbour a great diversity of specialized organisms that are of interest from both a conservation and evolutionary perspective (Fig. 1). Subterranean species are often short-range endemics (occurring within a single cave or geological formation), and some represent ancestors of faunas that disappeared from surface habitats. Thus, they account for a considerable proportion of global taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity that is currently imperilled by human activities4, especially climate change8.

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Fig. 1: Biodiversity, ecosystem services and current status of protection of subterranean ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the project CAWEB (Testing macroecological theory using simplified systems — 882221), funded by Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019) to S.M. D.S.-F. is funded by the Ramón y Cajal programme (RYC2019-027446-I) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. DMPG is funded by the LIFE Programme, AQUALIFE LIFE12 BIO/IT/000231.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: David Sánchez-Fernández, Stefano Mammola.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament of Ecology and Hydrology, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    David Sánchez-Fernández

  2. Department of Life, Health & Environmental Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Diana M. P. Galassi

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Adaptable Western Landscapes, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    J. Judson Wynne

  4. LIBRe—Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Pedro Cardoso & Stefano Mammola

  5. DarkMEG—Molecular Ecology Group, Water Research Institute (IRSA), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Verbania Pallanza, Italy

    Stefano Mammola

Authors
  1. David Sánchez-Fernández
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Correspondence to Stefano Mammola.

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Sánchez-Fernández, D., Galassi, D.M.P., Wynne, J.J. et al. Don’t forget subterranean ecosystems in climate change agendas. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 458–459 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01057-y

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