Severe drought and warming increase the extinction risk of cacti.

Including severe drought and warmer temperatures in cactus species distribution models increases projected extinction risk by raising the share losing suitable climatic area from 58–61% to 69–72% across SSPs.

• Why it matters: Species distribution models often use long-term mean climate, missing nonlinear impacts of extreme events that may strongly affect where threatened taxa can persist.
• What they did: Using 648,316 curated cactus occurrence records and models for 993 Cactaceae species, the study integrated new spatial data on severe drought and compounding warming, comparing severe-drought models to mean-climate models.
• The result: In 91% of cases, severe-drought models were better supported, and limiting dispersal from 100 to 0 km increased losses from 69–72% to 84–85%, reducing regional richness in five bioregions.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.