Yarrow’s Spiny Lizard Faces Extinction Due to Climate Change

The Yarrow’s spiny lizard (Sceloporus jarrovii) is facing a greater threat of extinction due to climate change.

As researchers show that half of the lizard’s populations have complete disappeared from their native ranges in 18 of Arizona’s Sky Islands mountain ranges.

The researchers, led by Prof. John J. Wiens, of the University of Arizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and senior author of the study, studied all 18 mountain ranges in 2014, and 2015 and then resurveyed the ranges in 2021 and 2022.

The resurvey found that the populations of yarrow’s spiny lizard had disappeared by half due to the warmer than normal temperatures at the lower elevations. The lizards at the lower elevations could not tolerate the increasing heat, which the researchers say is a signature pattern of climate change.