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Lizard disappearances in the areas the team studied can’t be due to habitat destruction because they’re occurring where habitat has been protected.
Rather, hotter sites close to the equator or at low altitudes are most likely to lose their lizards.
To see how hotter climates damaged the reptiles, Sinervo’s team created a dummy lizard, set it out in the sun at sites in the Yucatan Peninsula where Sceloporus is found and where it had gone extinct, and monitored its temperature.
Like all organisms, lizards must avoid overheating and keep their body temperature within a certain range to survive.
The problem, the team found, seems to be warmer springtimes, rather than higher maximum temperatures at midday or in midsummer.
Higher temperatures in spring mean that the animals spend less of the breeding season out foraging and more time in the shade.
“That is the time of year that females need the maximum amount of food,” says Huey.
“If the temperature gets higher in the spring, then the lizards restrict their activity.
They simply may not have enough active time to catch enough food.”
Underfed females do not have the resources needed to make young, causing populations to crash.
The ecological consequences of lizard extinctions are unknown.
“If Barry’s right or even close to right,” Huey says, “the world as we know it will be very different.
Lizards are primarily insect eaters.
So if a population goes extinct, that will affect the insects living there.
Lizards are also prey for many snakes, birds, mammals and some other lizards.
But how serious those 〔effects〕 will be is going to be very difficult to predict.”
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