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Elevated extinction risk of cacti under climate change

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 366–372 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cactaceae (cacti), a New World plant family, is one of the most endangered groups of organisms on the planet. Conservation planning is uncertain as it is unclear whether climate and land-use change will positively or negatively impact global cactus diversity. On the one hand, a common perception is that future climates will be favourable to cacti as they have multiple adaptations and specialized physiologies and morphologies for increased heat and drought. On the other hand, the wide diversity of the more than 1,500 cactus species, many of which occur in more mesic and cooler ecosystems, questions the view that most cacti can tolerate warmer and drought conditions. Here we assess the hypothesis that cacti will benefit and expand in potential distribution in a warmer and more drought-prone world. We quantified exposure to climate change through range forecasts and associated diversity maps for 408 cactus species under three Representative Concentration Pathways (2.6, 4.5 and 8.5) for 2050 and 2070. Our analyses show that 60% of species will experience a reduction in favourable climate, with about a quarter of species exposed to environmental conditions outside of the current realized niche in over 25% of their current distribution. These results show low sensitivity to many uncertainties in forecasting, mostly deriving from dispersal ability and model complexity rather than climate scenarios. While current range size and the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List category were not statistically significant predictors of predicted future changes in suitable climate area, epiphytes had the greatest exposure to novel climates. Overall, the number of cactus species at risk is projected to increase sharply in the future, especially in current richness hotspots. Land-use change has previously been identified as the second-most-common driver of threat among cacti, affecting many of the ~31% of cacti that are currently threatened. Our results suggest that climate change will become a primary driver of cactus extinction risk with 60–90% of species assessed negatively impacted by climate change and/or other anthropogenic processes, depending on how these threat processes are distributed across cactus species.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of predicted current cactus species richness.
Fig. 2: Standard deviation of predicted current species richness.
Fig. 3: Predicted SAR relative to the present for 2061–2080.
Fig. 4: Map of modeling decisions explaining the most uncertainty in species richness.

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Data availability

Occurrence data used for analyses are available only upon request to protect the many threatened species modelled. Requests should be made through the BIEN portal at https://biendata.org/. Bioclimate data were retrieved from the CHELSA repository, version 1.2 (https://chelsa-climate.org/; CMIP5). Expert maps were obtained from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and the IUCN SSC Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group. IUCN Red List categories were obtained from the IUCN Red List database (https://www.iucnredlist.org/). The Human Footprint map for 2009 (at a resolution of 1 km) was downloaded from Venter et al.38.

Code availability

Code is available at https://github.com/mdpillet/PricklyProspects/.

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Acknowledgements

M.P. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant number DGE-1746060. M.P. is grateful to T. Davis for his feedback. We are indebted to the many individuals who made this project possible by collecting and reporting occurrence data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Michiel Pillet & Brian J. Enquist

  2. International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission, Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group, Cambridge, UK

    Michiel Pillet & Barbara Goettsch

  3. The Biodiversity Consultancy Ltd, Cambridge, UK

    Barbara Goettsch

  4. Eversource Energy Center and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Cory Merow & Brian Maitner

  5. Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Xiao Feng

  6. Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA

    Patrick R. Roehrdanz

  7. Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA

    Brian J. Enquist

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Contributions

M.P. created, developed and led the project. B.G. contributed expert maps. All authors contributed to the analyses. M.P. drafted the manuscript, and all authors provided comments on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Michiel Pillet.

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Nature Plants thanks Lucas Majure, Ángela P. Cuervo-Robayo and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Pillet, M., Goettsch, B., Merow, C. et al. Elevated extinction risk of cacti under climate change. Nat. Plants 8, 366–372 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01130-0

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