A release appearing in PLOS Biology reports that a study of the common European lizard Zootoca vivipara has indicated they could be headed for significant population losses if the climate warms by 2 degrees Celsius. A 2-degree rise can speed up their life cycle, making them breed faster but also die more quickly, researchers found.<\/p>\n
Using a semi-natural study enclosure called the Metatron, researchers compared 18 populations of lizards for a year, some at a current climate temperature and the others at 2 degrees Celsius higher. Even though lizards typically respond well to heat, it was discovered that they did not necessarily respond in beneficial ways to a 2-degree Celsius increase. <\/p>\n
They matured faster and bred faster, but also died faster, leaving population decreases in their wake. However, a possibly hopeful sign for the lizards is that, while they bred fast and died younger, they were in some cases shown to have extra broods.<\/p>\n
Top image:\u00a0Zootoca vivipara. (Credit: Stanislaw Szydlo\/https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/deed.en)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A release appearing in PLOS Biology reports that a study of the common European lizard Zootoca vivipara has indicated they could be headed for significant population losses if the climate warms by 2 degrees Celsius. A 2-degree rise can speed up their life cycle, making them breed faster but also die more quickly, researchers found. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":23732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,7],"tags":[157,345,290,103],"class_list":["post-23728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-atmosphere","category-news","tag-climate-change","tag-earth-atmosphere","tag-lizards","tag-news-2"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"\n