After comparing these findings tofrom the same mountain ranges, Wiens's group found that the average extinction rate of the lizard populations at low elevations had tripled over the past seven years, relative to the preceding 42 years.
Although previous studies have predicted that climate-related extinctions will increase with the rising pace of global warming, Wiens said he hasn't seen any showing that this acceleration of extinction has already happened. Also, a distinct 3-million-year-old lineage of the Yarrow's spiny lizard from the Mule Mountains, near Bisbee, may be completely extinct by 2025, according to Wiens.
"The low-elevation populations in the Mules were fine in 2014. Now the only ones that we have found left were within about 300 feet of the top of the mountain in 2022, and they appear to have been losing about 170 feet per year," he said. However, not all low-elevation populations went extinct between the surveys, Wiens said. For example, two populations that occurred at very low elevations survived. Before they disappeared, the research group had collected genomic data from most of those populations in 2014 and 2015. They found that those populations that were less genetically variable and were exposed to greater climate change effects were the ones that tended to go extinct.
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