baobabs: symbol of resilience or victim of climate change?

In 2018, Patrut et al. published a paper in Nature Plants entitled “The demise of the largest and oldest African baobabs” and reported that 10 of the 15 trees they examined had recently died or collapsed. The authors characterized this mortality as “most unexpected”, although they did not provide demographic data of entire baobab populations to illustrate what might be expected. In addition, in the penultimate sentence they proposed that “the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate conditions that affect southern Africa in particular”, despite not mentioning climate effects previously. Although the authors then clearly stated that “further research is necessary to support or refute this supposition”, the suggestion that recent failure of some of the largest, most ancient baobabs may have been due to climate change caught the media’s attention and went viral. A fleeting speculation became exaggerated and cast as an enduring fact – climate change is killing Africa’s baobabs.  In contrast, we provide evidence that most baobab (Adansonia digitata) populations found on mainland Africa are healthy, and the cohort of oldest and largest African baobabs is enduring. We discuss the longevity of baobabs and speculate on what may have caused the collapse and death of some of these giants. We also give a brief overview of other threats and provide a summary. 

Methods
Baobab trees that had been measured in 2006  in South Africa (see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117593 ) were revisited in April and November 2023 to varify if they were still alive or if they had died over the last 17 years.