Climate change to kill off a fifth of world's lizards: study

Global warming could kill off as many as a fifth of the world's lizards by 2080, with potentially devastating consequences for ecosystems around the world, a study has said.

Researchers who conducted a major survey of lizard populations worldwide said in a study published in the May 14 issue of Science that lizards appear to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change and are dying off at an alarming rate.

The loss of the lizard populations could wreak havoc with ecosystems in which they are a crucial part of the food chain, since they are important prey for many birds, snakes and voracious predators of insects.

The biologists in the study ruled out factors other than global warming as being responsible for the rapid decrease in the lizard population.

"We did a lot of work on the ground to validate the model and show that the extinctions are the result of climate change," said Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.