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Climate Change-Resilient Conservation of Cacti
The family Cactaceae is thought to have originated in South America between 30 and 50 million years ago. High diversification rates have given rise to nearly 2,000 cactus species across the Americas. Habitat destruction and overcollection have caused this family to be one of the most threatened angiosperm lineages, with over 31% of species assessed as threatened by the IUCN Red List. Until recently, this iconic clade lacked a family-wide climate change sensitivity analysis. Mich will give an overview of his dissertation research, which focused on three main questions. How will climate change impact Cactaceae? How does severe drought change these projections? Can we use evolutionary relatedness to predict climate change responses for rare species?