DOI: 10.1126/science.1184695 ISSN:

Erosion of Lizard Diversity by Climate Change and Altered Thermal Niches

Barry Sinervo, Fausto Méndez-de-la-Cruz, Donald B. Miles, Benoit Heulin, Elizabeth Bastiaans, Maricela Villagrán-Santa Cruz, Rafael Lara-Resendiz, Norberto Martínez-Méndez, Martha Lucía Calderón-Espinosa, Rubi Nelsi Meza-Lázaro, Héctor Gadsden, Luciano Javier Avila, Mariana Morando, Ignacio J. De la Riva, Pedro Victoriano Sepulveda, Carlos Frederico Duarte Rocha, Nora Ibargüengoytía, César Aguilar Puntriano, Manuel Massot, Virginie Lepetz, Tuula A. Oksanen, David G. Chapple, Aaron M. Bauer, William R. Branch, Jean Clobert, Jack W. Sites
  • Multidisciplinary
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Demise of the Lizards

Despite pessimistic forecasts from recent studies examining the effects of global climate change on species, and observed extinctions in local geographic areas, there is little evidence so far of global-scale extinctions. Sinervo et al. (p. 894 ; see the Perspective by Huey et al. ) find that extinctions resulting from climate change are currently reducing global lizard diversity. Climate records during the past century were synthesized with detailed surveys of Mexican species at 200 sites over the past 30 years. Temperature change has been so rapid in this region that rates of adaptation have not kept pace with climate change. The models were then extended to all families of lizards at >1000 sites across the globe, and suggest that climate change-induced extinctions are currently affecting worldwide lizard assemblages.

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