Stapelia hirsuta var. gariepensis coping with little

Succulents, even unusual ones, are well represented among the living in desert land where only few species can make it. Stapelia hirsuta var. gariepensis on this forbidding Richtersveld slope brings the good news that it holds its own where few other things would live well today.

Heat and lack of moisture put paid to softy plants and animals of milder regions, even before the expected but poorly understood climate change moves to full force. Whether this Stapelia will survive global warming remains to be seen. To be seen by those still around to see anything at all!

More good news: The series of mass extinctions that hit the earth long ago had reduced biodiversity several times by more than 50 percent, sometimes around 90 percent. Life forms survived selectively, each time only the relatively few kinds of organisms that matched the prevailing challenges.

The return of lush times to multiply was only for the life forms of the survivor species, extinction meaning exactly what it says. Evolution is continuous. As long as there is life, the tree of life is rebuilt slowly from every residue, crafting speciation in new directions allowed for by what has survived and the changed conditions.

The mix of organisms at any given time is thus a function of what made it through the most recent disaster. The sum of successful adaptations is life’s triumph of the moment.

What the current time’s downturn in biodiversity will leave as the most resilient residue is hard to predict. Again, a unique selection of species will rule on earth when good times of a new kind return… later, very much later, if ever.

The size of the jump in number of generations across significant speciation changes is like comprehending astronomical numbers, space travel over light year distances; hard even for bright people. But trust life to perform at its best as always. Not in protecting particular species in their present form, but keeping something alive in whatever form through the storm. What that ecology will thrive on is unthinkable before each extinction.

Life is so much more significant than any of its forms, while the features of the real big storm to come are mostly inconceivable.