A global study led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences reveals that evolutionary history plays a much larger role than current environmental conditions in shaping how plants store carbon. Researchers analyzed nearly 30,000 measurements from over 2,000 species and found that evolutionary factors explain 55.9-77.1% of the variability in nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) storage, while climate and other environmental factors account for only 2.4-9.2%. The findings challenge current vegetation models that treat plant carbon storage as a passive response to climate. Instead, the study suggests that plants have evolved distinct storage strategies over millions of years, with closely related species sharing similar approaches. This has direct implications for predicting how forests and other ecosystems will respond to climate change. For carbon markets and climate modeling, this means that species-level evolutionary data should be incorporated into predictions of carbon storage potential. Current models may be underestimating or misrepresenting how different plant communities will behave as temperatures and rainfall patterns shift.
