Specific habitat requirements and niche conservatism for nine species of the Mexican genus Thelocactus (Cactaceae)

Abstract

Specific habitat requirements and niche conservatism for nine species of the Mexican genus Thelocactus (Cactaceae) Requerimientos específicos de hábitat y conservación de nicho para nueve especies del género mexicano Thelocactus (Cactaceae)

Neotype of Echinocactus fossulatus (Cactaceae) and the first register of Thelocactus hexaedrophorus, in Aguascalientes, Mexico

“…2) expands the southwestern limits of the known distribution of this species endemic to Mexico (GBIF 2021). In Aguascalientes, it is distribuited at the northeastern border of the state, in the Chihuahuan Desert biogeographic province (Morrone et al 2017), in microphyllous desert scrub (Siqueiros-Delgado et al 2017), habitat similar to the previously reported for all the members of the genus Thelocactus (Mosco 2019).…”

Spatial patterns of evolutionary diversity in Cactaceae show low ecological representation within protected areas

“…The role of temperature and precipitation as drivers of diversification and bioregionalization has long been recognized (e.g., Antonelli, 2017). For Cactaceae, temperature seems to be the most important factor to predict the species diversity in the Neotropics, which was also demonstrated for specific genera of cactus and other groups of species distributed in xeric landscapes (López, 2017;Gottlieb et al, 2019;Mosco, 2019;Aquino et al, 2021). The isothermality (diurnal range of temperatures per temperature seasonality) in arid and semiarid regions, including desertic areas, displays low oscillations between day and night, which seems to favor CAM photosynthetic metabolism and the reduction in evapotranspiration of Cactaceae (stomata remaining closed during the daytime; Mosco, 2019).…”

The importance of environmental conditions in maintaining lineage identity in Epithelantha (Cactaceae)

“…Another genus that shares a similar pattern with Epithelantha is Thelocactus Britton & Rose. Similar isothermal values imply that the habitat is subject to extreme temperature fluctuations (Mosco, 2019). Isothermality has also favored adaptive radiation events in Mammillaria (López, 2017), and together with precipitation seasonality, these variables have been involved in the differentiation of Stenocereus species (Alvarado-Sizzo et al, 2018).…”