Montane Plants in a Changing World: Vulnerability and Conservation Insights From African Mountains

Mountain ecosystems serve as critical refugia for global biodiversity and are increasingly threatened by climate and land-use changes (Urban 2024). The complex topography of these mountain areas generates steep environmental gradients in relatively short distances that frequently impede species dispersal and recolonization, further amplifying the ecological and evolutionary impacts of global change (Rahbek et al. 2019). Montane plant species are particularly vulnerable due to their relatively long generation times, limited dispersal capacity, and the fragmented nature of montane landscapes, which constrain their ability to track climatic changes and recover from habitat loss (Chen et al. 2025). These constraints not only affect species persistence but also drive profound restructuring of communities and ecosystem functioning. Therefore, understanding how montane plants respond to multiple environmental pressures is essential for elucidating adaptive mechanisms and guiding effective conservation strategies. The African mountains, which cover 1,863,000 km2 of land area with elevation ranging from 500 to 5895 m, harbor at least 5 of 36 global biodiversity hot spots and exhibit extremely high plant diversity. Unfortunately, warming rates in these mountains far exceed the global average, placing their plant communities among the most vulnerable to the impacts of global changes. In a study newly published in Global Change Biology, Vidal Junior et al. (2025) provide the continental-scale assessment of African montane plants' exposure to future climate and land-use stressors. By modeling the potential range shifts of 607 vascular plant species across 112 mountain ranges in 41 African countries under multiple scenarios of climate and land-use changes, they predict that around 50%–75% of the studied species will experience a decline in suitable habitats under different emission scenarios, with the mean contractions estimated at 19%–50%. The effects of species range contraction could be much stronger if species' actual dispersal distances were applied. Upward elevation shifts are the most pervasive response of montane plants to future environments, moving upward at rates up to three times faster than the global average. This phenomenon is named the “elevator effect” or “escalator to extinction,” suggesting that cold-adapted species at high elevations may face high risks of mountaintop extirpations. Empirical evidence from African mountains reinforces the pronounced vulnerability of geographically isolated flora (e.g., alpine and island ecosystems) and highlights the urgent needs for targeted conservation within mountain ecosystems. Vidal Junior et al. (2025) predict that trees and shrubs in African mountains are generally more tolerant of environmental change than herbs and ferns, but highly diverse responses exist among life forms, families, and dispersal modes. Under the high-emission scenario, up to 459 species are projected to lose suitable habitats. Meanwhile, fewer species are expected to expand their ranges, most of which are shrubs and trees under the low-emission scenario. These findings underscore the potential of life history strategies and functional traits (e.g., dispersal capacity and drought tolerance) to evaluate species' adaptation ability along environmental gradients (Green et al. 2022). In addition, this study reveals a significant disparity in extinction risk between regions. The most severe losses occurred in Madagascar, the East African Highlands, and the Southern African mountains, with certain areas of the Southern and Central African Highlands anticipated to lose all suitable habitats for the studied species. In contrast, the West African mountains consistently showed increases in species richness under all scenarios. Together with the work on the comparisons of disjunction plant species in North America and East Asia (Song et al. 2021), these studies underscore the urgency of region-specific and species-specific strategies for species conservation and restoration. This work in African mountains also reveals critical knowledge shortfalls in mountain biodiversity (Hortal et al. 2015). First, data limitations (Wallacean and Linnean shortfalls) significantly hamper accurate assessments of species vulnerability. Although the authors have compiled the distribution data for 27,789 plant species within these mountains, only 607 species with sufficient records were used for this work. Among them, only 167 endemic species were included, and only 31% of modeled species have been evaluated by the IUCN Red List currently. These limitations stem from data gaps in taxonomy and biogeography, which skew models toward well-sampled regions, compromise habitat suitability assessments, and constrain the use of systematic and genetic evidence in conservation evaluation. Second, accurate, fine-scale data on abiotic and biotic factors are lacking (Hutchinsonian and Eltonian shortfalls). The coarse spatial resolutions (5 km or larger) used in the current species distribution modeling can homogenize the fine-scale environmental textures along elevation gradients in mountains, and overlook local biotic processes, leading to parameter biases when applied to complex mountain systems or ecologically vulnerable taxa. Generally, in mountains, complex topography and vegetation structure cause sharp microclimate variations over relatively short distances (Lembrechts et al. 2019), which play a key role in shaping regional-scale plant distributions. At the same time, local biotic interactions such as competition, predation, and disturbance, profoundly influence species distributions but are rarely incorporated into models due to limited and high-quality in situ monitoring data. In summary, Vidal Junior et al.'s (2025) study highlights the vulnerability of plant species in African mountain ecosystems under climate and land-use change, and offers a robust foundation for developing scientifically informed, region-specific conservation and restoration strategies. Confronting the accelerating environmental challenges, long-term biodiversity monitoring across mountains is key to tracking the changes in multi-taxon species distributions (Urban 2024), population demographic dynamics (Yang et al. 2025), species adaptation ability to climate change, and biotic interactions across biological taxa and geographic regions. To achieve this, it is essential to establish long-term monitoring transects spanning elevation gradients that integrate multiple levels of biological taxa and account for fine-scale abiotic factors such as microclimate and soil properties (Peters et al. 2019). This integrative framework enables the identification of biodiversity patterns and their multidimensional drivers along elevations and across mountains and regions. Furthermore, emerging technologies, such as near-surface remote sensing and hyperspectral imaging, provide new opportunities to track the dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystem functions. These new tools can overcome the scale limitations of traditional fields to some degree. Only through such coordinated and comprehensive observations and collections in mountains can we apply fundamental ecological knowledge into region-specific conservation practices and adaptive management. Yongru Wu: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Jingye Li: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Jian Zhang: funding acquisition, writing – review and editing. We thank the editor for the invitation to provide this piece. This study is partly supported by the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2023ZKZD36) and the starting grant of Sun Yat-sen University. This work was supported by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, 2023ZKZD36. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. This article is an Invited Commentary on Vidal Junior et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70492. The authors have nothing to report.