Newshot Climate Warming Intensifies Droughts, Even Cacti Struggle to Survive
IT之家 November 15 news — Cacti have long been regarded as a symbol of tenacious vitality. In deserts with sparse rainfall and scorching sun, they not only survive but thrive, providing roosting sites for birds such as owls and, through their flowers, food for bats and other pollinating animals.
Yet this seemingly indestructible plant is now facing a serious crisis. Habitat loss and the illegal collection of some species, which then flow into the private collector market, have already made the survival situation of cacti increasingly dire. Now, a new study published in the journal Nature finds that worsening droughts will also become an important factor threatening the survival of cacti.
The researchers used models to predict the effects of future climate change, taking into account not only continuously rising temperatures but also the droughts that come with them. The results showed that among nearly 1,000 cactus species studied, the suitable habitat of most species will shrink as the climate changes drastically. By 2100, more than a quarter of the species could lose at least 80% of their current habitat.
米希尔 · 皮莱特 (Michiel Pillet), a conservation ecologist at the University of South Florida and the paper's first author, said: "The public generally believes that cacti are extremely drought-tolerant and highly resilient, as if they can survive no matter what happens. But in reality, although cacti are truly remarkable and are my favorite group of plants, they are not fundamentally different from other plants."
This means that cacti likewise cannot do without water.
Take the deserts of the southwestern United States as an example: cacti rely on seasonal monsoon rains to replenish their water. The local annual rainfall peak usually occurs in July or August. Despite living in the desert, cacti have evolved a series of survival mechanisms adapted to drought, such as reducing water loss through a waxy surface layer, thereby preserving as much of the water obtained during the rainy season as possible.
皮莱特 said: "Like other plants, cacti evolved gradually under the environmental conditions they are familiar with. Once they are moved out of these environments, they may not be able to adapt."
These cacti can be thought of as sick hospitalized patients. A person may show symptoms of heatstroke because the body cannot effectively dissipate heat, but at the same time, they may also be dehydrated.
As global temperatures rise and droughts continue to intensify, cacti are under similar dual pressure.
皮莱特 said: "If you factor in drought, you find that the survival situation of cacti is far worse than we previously thought. These findings not only change our judgment of the future plight of cacti, but are also likely to change our understanding of broader plant groups under climate change."
To make the predictions more accurate, the researchers did not rely solely on climate models but instead analyzed data from the citizen science platform iNaturalist. The platform allows ordinary users to upload photos of plants and animals, from which the researchers obtained about 650,000 observations of wild cacti, thereby gaining a clearer picture of the current survival status of different species.
In fact, the problems facing cacti are not merely a matter of gradually withering and eventually dying.
Persistent drought will certainly leave cacti short of water, but the effects of drought may be more complex and may even differ across different growth stages.
皮莱特 said: "Now we can further study which growth stages are most affected: adult plants or seedlings? And which physiological processes are specifically affected? Is it slower growth, higher mortality, or the plant's inability to flower normally?"
In other words, drought may cause hidden damage to cacti that does not kill them immediately but affects their reproductive capacity. A lack of water may not kill a cactus right away, but it may prevent it from flowering and setting fruit normally. Over time, the population will steadily decline.
For example, in the Sonoran Desert, the iconic Saguaro cactus is reproducing less frequently during prolonged droughts, partly because they do not flower normally every year.
The problem is that desert ecosystems, though they appear resilient, are in fact very fragile.
Marcos Robles, chief scientist for Arizona at The Nature Conservancy, who was not involved in the study, said: "Once a desert ecosystem is damaged or degraded, it is very difficult to recover quickly, because water resources here are extremely scarce and temperatures are very high. Recovery often takes decades, and in some cases may never happen."
Today, drought is compounding other threats such as habitat loss and illegal collection, pushing cacti further to the brink of survival.
On the other hand, too much water can also cause disaster. As sea levels rise, the Key Largo tree cactus has already gone extinct locally in Florida, the first known case in the United States of a local plant extinction caused by sea-level rise.
Rising nighttime temperatures are also a problem that cannot be ignored. Saguaro cacti and some other cacti usually carry out respiration at night to reduce water loss. But if nighttime temperatures are too high, this process will be affected.
Rod Haenni, president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, who was not involved in the study, said: "If nighttime temperatures are very high, they cannot complete this process normally. If the plants are watered at such times, they may even rot outright."
However, some cactus species may still have a chance to survive by shifting their population range.
Of course, an individual cactus will not migrate on its own, but as the environment changes, an entire population may gradually spread to areas with more suitable climate conditions, seeking habitats closer to the environments in which the species evolved thousands of years ago.
IT之家 notes that similar phenomena are in fact also occurring in the Arctic region. Some plants are gradually spreading further north in search of more suitable temperature and moisture conditions.
The ultimate purpose of such research is to help conservation workers more accurately identify conservation priorities. Although humans cannot stop droughts from occurring, they can, through ex situ conservation, move a certain number of cacti to botanical gardens, establish new populations, and provide these plants with relatively safe living space as the climate becomes increasingly unsuitable.
In some cases, if local drought and high temperatures no longer pose a sustained threat to the population, researchers can also try to reintroduce these species into the wild.
Haenni also said that governments need to strengthen land protection in areas where cacti are threatened. He believes this new study could help drive such measures forward.
Haenni said: "I hope this study can awaken more attention. But the problem is that many of the governments in the relevant countries are indifferent to this. There are actually many people locally who are not indifferent, but unfortunately they do not hold government decision-making power."
- https://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2015142
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