As the planet heats up, nature’s recovery rate declines, and that old idea that ecosystems quickly shuffle around as the climate changes doesn’t quite hold up anymore.
A new study in Nature Communications (published February 3, 2026), as reported by Sigma Earth portal, shows that species turnover has slowed in many places over the last century, even though the environment is shifting faster than ever. If you’re not familiar, “turnover” means how fast one set of species vanishes and gets replaced by new ones in a community. Scientists expected this to accelerate as habitats change due to warming, but the data indicate otherwise.
100 years, covering forests, rivers, and oceans. They used time-series data, such as those in the BioTIME database, and examined what happened before and after the environment began to intensify its changes, particularly from the 1970s onward.
The findings show that the rate of species turnover over short stretches of one to five years slowed down in many more places than it sped up, about one-third slower. Co-author Axel Rossberg said they didn’t expect the drop to be that large, so, instead of ecosystems scrambling to keep up with climate change, it appears nature’s recovery is lagging.
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