Assisted Species Migration of Joshua Trees
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v12i3.5047Keywords:
Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, assisted species migration, mutualism, climate change, yucca moth, evolution, extinction, pollination, climate models, arctic, conservation, pleistocene, anthropocene, shasta ground sloth, cheat grasss, managed relocation, wildfire, genetic swamping, climate refugia, bald eagle, California condor, habitat, ecological ethics, seeds, nurse plant, rodents, pollinator, arctic amplification, Sonoran, Colorado, migration, packrat midden, carbon dioxide, invasive species, rapid evolution, ovipositor, coevolutionary partner, butterfly effect, keystone species, Mojave, CaliforniaAbstract
The Joshua tree evolved in a complex way with its environment, pollinator, and seed dispersers over millions of years. Its survival as a species is now imminently threatened by climate change. Many factors prevent it from migrating to a cooler range quickly enough to keep up with the planet’s current rate of warming. This paper explores the viability of assisted migration for the Joshua tree, where humans help it move to escape extinction. Several studies are examined. One persuasively shows that the Joshua tree had a range contraction when the climate warmed at the end of the Ice Age and that present warming will cause a similar, drastic range reduction. Other studies look at factors such as soil, CO2, pollinator mutualism, and seed longevity to determine if assisted migration would be successful. The ethics of assisted migration is also explored. This paper concludes that humans must try to assist the Joshua tree to migrate but that it will be difficult given the complexities of its evolution, its relationship to its environment, and a migration lag that is not completely understood.
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