Could climate change lead to lizard extinction?

Climate change could be leading to the extinction of some lizards. The loss of plant and animal species on Earth is happening at a speed never seen in human history, according to the United Nations.

That includes the likely extinction of the population of Yarrow’s spiny lizards found in southern Arizona.

Dr. John Wiens, an Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Arizona, joined “Arizona Horizon” to explain this catastrophic event.

The mountain range is a problem for the Yarrow spiny lizards, and it makes it more difficult for the lizards to survive which is why the population is declining. 

“We surveyed them in 2014, and they were down about 5,700 feet. We came back in 2022 and 2023, they were just surviving a little bit at the top of the mountain, up above 7,000 feet, and the real problem there is you know it’s not a tall mountain range, so they only got about 300 feet of elevation left and after that they’re gone,” said Dr. Wiens. 

The lizards that are the most genetically variable are the ones that will survive during the extinction. 

Dr. Wiens conducted a survey, and almost half of the species would go extinct from the climate. 

“I did a survey back in 2016, looked at 976 species, and there were these sort of climate-related local extinctions in 47% of them,” said Dr. Wiens. 

“So in the case of these lizards, we can show the populations that have experienced the most warming are the ones that are disappearing,” said Dr. Wiens.