Carbon Brief reports:

Scientists’ understanding of how climate change and habitat loss could drive plant and fungi extinctions is being hamstrung by knowledge gaps in how many species currently exist, a new report warns.

More than 90% of fungi have yet to be found and formally described by scientists, according to a new report from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The “State of the World’s Plants and Fungi” report, which is based on both peer-reviewed and preliminary studies, also says that almost half of all flowering plant species could be at risk of extinction.

Habitat and land-use changes are the biggest threat to plants and fungi, but climate change is expected to become an even larger issue in the future, the director of science at Kew tells Carbon Brief. [Continue reading…]