Biodiversité en crise et adaptation

The current biodiversity crisis is a cause of concern for human societies, mainly owing to the ecosystemic services rendered by other species. Biological crises are, paradoxically, periods of renewal, when, as past crises have shown, biodiversity rapidly adapts. In response to the changes under way, species are likely to adapt through natural selection. As the scientific literature shows, plant and animal species do adapt to changes: global warming, the decline of pollinators, etc. The evolutionary rescue model has formally described this sort of selection as a defense against the extinction of populations. The function of adaptation in attenuating extinction processes is open to discussion however, since adaptation has not usually spared species from extinction (a factual observation). Adaptation entails major modifications of the dependency between species in an ecosystem (e.g., food webs) and, thus, in the system's operation.