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Winners and losers in the predicted impact of climate change on cacti species in Baja California

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Abstract

The Cactaceae is considered one of the most threatened taxa in the world. However, the extent to which climate change could compromise the conservation status of this group has rarely been investigated. The present study advances this issue under three specific aims: (1) to assess the impact of climate change on the distribution of endemic cacti species in the Baja California Peninsula (n = 40), (2) to study how the impact of climate change is distributed in this group according to the species’ conservation status, and (3) to analyze how these impacts are organized from a biogeographical and functional perspective. We addressed these objectives under three socioeconomic emission pathways (RCP 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5), and using two extreme migration scenarios: full climate change tracking and no migration. Altogether, all socioeconomic emission pathways under the two extreme migration scenarios show consistency regarding the identity of the species most vulnerable to climate change, and depict a discrepant future scenario that has, on one hand, species with large potential habitat gains/stability (winners); and on the other, species with large habitat reductions (losers). Our work indicates that winner species have a tropical affinity, globose growth, and includes most of the currently threatened species, whereas loser ones are in arid and Mediterranean systems and are mostly non-threatened. Thus, current and future threat factors do not overlap in the biogeographic and taxonomic space. That reveals a worrisome horizon at supraspecific levels in the study area, since the total number of threatened species in the future might largely increase.

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Acknowledgements

To the herbarium curators: José Delgadillo, Jose Luis León and Jon Rebman, who additionally contributed with suggestions as a cacti expert. To Pedro Peña Garcillán, for his observations throughout the development of this research. Raúl Martinez Rincón, for the support in the programming process and the statistical analysis of the data. To the research group of “Ecological modeling for global change research laboratory”, especially to Pedro Abellán Rodenas for the support in the process of model development and data analysis, and Aishwarya Bhattacharjee for the feedback in English language editing and manuscript proofreading.

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  1. José D. Anadón

    Present address: Department of Agricultural Sciences and the Environment, University of Zaragoza, 22071, Huesca, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste SC, Av. Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Playa Palo de Santa Rita Sur, 23096, La Paz, B.C.S, Mexico

    Eva Benavides & Aurora Breceda

  2. Department of Biology, Queens College, City University of New York, Queens, NY, 11367, USA

    José D. Anadón

  3. Biology Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    José D. Anadón

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  1. Eva Benavides
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Correspondence to Aurora Breceda.

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Communicated by Hsiao-Hsuan Wang.

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Benavides, E., Breceda, A. & Anadón, J.D. Winners and losers in the predicted impact of climate change on cacti species in Baja California. Plant Ecol 222, 29–44 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01085-2

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