"More than half of species could face greater extinction risk by midcentury, a new study found, as rising heat and dryness test the prickly plants’ limits."
"The hardy cactus — fond of heat and aridity, adapted to rough soils — might not seem like the picture of a climate change victim.
Yet even these prickly survivors may be reaching their limits as the planet grows hotter and drier over the coming decades, according to research published on Thursday. The study estimates that, by midcentury, global warming could put 60 percent of cactus species at greater risk of extinction.
That forecast does not take into account the poaching, habitat destruction and other human-caused threats that already make cactuses one of the world’s most endangered groups of organisms.
Most cactus species “are in some way adapted to the climates and the environments that they live in,” said Michiel Pillet, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who led the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Plants. “Even a slight change may be too much for them to adapt over shorter time scales.”"
Raymond Zhong reports for the New York Times April 14, 2022.
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