Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards

Dartmouth study contradicts predictions of widespread extinction

2013-05-17

(Press-News.org) A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.

The findings, which appear in the journal Global Change Biology, offer new hope for survival of a creature thought to be doomed: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12253/abstract

Most predictions that tropical cold-blooded animals, especially forest lizards, will be hard hit by climate change are based on global-scale measurements of environmental temperatures, which miss much of the fine-scale variation in temperature that individual animals experience on the ground, said the article's lead author, Michael Logan, a Ph.D. student in ecology and evolutionary biology.

To address this disconnect, the Dartmouth researchers measured environmental temperatures at extremely high resolution and used those measurements to project the effects of climate change on the running abilities of four populations of lizard from the Bay Islands of Honduras. Field tests on the captured lizards, which were released unharmed, were conducted between 2008 and 2012.

Previous studies have suggested that open-habitat tropical lizard species are likely to invade forest habitat and drive forest species to extinction, but the Dartmouth research suggests that the open-habitat populations will not invade forest habitat and may actually benefit from predicted warming for many decades. Conversely, one of the forest species studied should experience reduced activity time as a result of warming, while two others are unlikely to experience a significant decline in performance.

The overall results suggest that global-scale predictions generated using low-resolution temperature data may overestimate the vulnerability of many tropical lizards to climate change.

"Whereas studies conducted to date have made uniformly bleak predictions for the survival of tropical forest lizards around the globe, our data show that four similar species, occurring in the same geographic region, differ markedly in their vulnerabilities to climate warming," the authors wrote. "Moreover, none appear to be on the brink of extinction. Considering that these populations occur over extremely small geographic ranges, it is possible that many tropical forest lizards, which range over much wider areas, may have even greater opportunity to escape warming."

### Broadcast studios: Dartmouth has TV and radio studios available for interviews. For more information, visit: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/radio-tv-studios/

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New X-ray method shows how frog embryos could help thwart disease

2013-05-17

LEMONT, Ill. – An international team of scientists using a new X-ray method recorded the internal structure and cell movement inside a living frog embryo in greater detail than ever before. This result showcases a new method to advance biological research and the search for new treatments for genetic diseases. Scientists at Northwestern University and the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie in Germany, in collaboration with the Advanced Photon Source at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, released the most precise depiction ever of the embryonic ...

Corruption influences migration of skilled workers

2013-05-17

HEIDELBERG, 17 May 2013 – Countries that have higher levels of corruption struggle to attract and retain skilled workers report the authors of a new study published in EMBO reports. Qualified workers are in demand in many countries around the world. They are internationally mobile and have the flexibility to take on new challenges. However, if the exodus of skilled workers exceeds the immigration rate of highly qualified individuals it may have a negative impact on the economic performance of a country. The authors studied the migration of highly skilled workers across ...

Control of heart disease risk factors varies among outpatient practices

2013-05-17

Control of heart disease risk factors varies widely among outpatient practices, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013. Researchers compared electronic health records of 115,737 patients in 18 primary care and cardiology practices participating in The Guideline Advantage™, a collaboration of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association that aims to reduce risks for chronic diseases. They found: The percentage of people whose hypertension ...

Diagnosing heart attacks: There's an app for that

2013-05-17

An experimental, inexpensive iPhone application transmitted diagnostic heart images faster and more reliably than emailing photo images, according to a research study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013. The app could help save lives by speeding treatment for the deadliest type of heart attack known as STEMI (ST segment elevation myocardial infarction), in which a clot blocks blood flow to the heart. A critical step in prompt, effective STEMI treatment is rapid transmission of an electrocardiogram ...

GPS solution provides 3-minute tsunami alerts

2013-05-17

Researchers have shown that, by using global positioning systems (GPS) to measure ground deformation caused by a large underwater earthquake, they can provide accurate warning of the resulting tsunami in just a few minutes after the earthquake onset. For the devastating Japan 2011 event, the team reveals that the analysis of the GPS data and issue of a detailed tsunami alert would have taken no more than three minutes. The results are published on 17 May in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Most ...

Study suggests new role for ECMO in treating patients with cardiac arrest and profound shock

2013-05-17

ATLANTA - Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a procedure traditionally used during cardiac surgeries and in the ICU that functions as an artificial replacement for a patient's heart and lungs, has also been used to resuscitate cardiac arrest victims in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Now, a novel study of this technique in the U.S. has been completed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, indicating a potential role for this intervention to save patients who are unable to be resuscitated through conventional measures. ...

Physical & emotional impairments common, often untreated in people with cancer

2013-05-17

ATLANTA – May 17, 2013– A new review finds cancer survivors suffer a diverse and complex set of impairments, affecting virtually every organ system. Writing in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Julie Silver, M.D., associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues say a majority of cancer survivors will have significant physical and psychological impairments as a result of treatments, and that these often go undetected and/or untreated, resulting in disability. Current data shows more than four in ten people will develop cancer during their lifetime. Due ...

New malaria test kit gives a boost to elimination efforts worldwide

2013-05-17

A new, highly sensitive blood test that quickly detects even the lowest levels of malaria parasites in the body could make a dramatic difference in efforts to tackle the disease in the UK and across the world, according to new research published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. In two studies led by researchers in the UK and Switzerland, the new LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) test was compared to existing methods in London laboratories that deal with imported cases of malaria to the UK, and to diagnostic methods used in the field in Uganda, where ...

Clinical support for patient self-management is rhetoric rather than reality

2013-05-17

The processes to allow people to self-manage their own illness are not being used appropriately by health professionals to the benefit of their patients, new research suggests. Self-management support aims to increase the patient's ability to take ownership over their condition and in some cases, to self-treat. It is widely seen as critical to ensure the sustainability of health services in terms of costs. Although potentially effective, patient based interventions can be limited as not all patients engage with them. However, embedding self-management support discussions ...

The genome sequence of Tibetan antelope sheds new light on high-altitude adaptation

2013-05-17

May 17, 2013, Shenzhen, China---- Why Tibetan antelope can live at elevations of 4,000-5,000m on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau? In a collaborative research published in Nature Communications, investigators from Qinghai University, BGI, and other institutes provide evidence that some genetic factors may be associated with the species' adaption to harsh highland environments. The data in this work will also provide implications for studying specific genetic mechanisms and the biology of other ruminant species. The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is a native of the ...

Gelada monkeys understand complex "conversations" involving distress calls and prosocial comforting responses, exhibiting surprise when such vocal exchanges are manipulated to violate their expectatio

New poison dart frog discovered in the Amazon's Juruá River basin is blue with copper-colored legs, and represents one of just two novel Ranitomeya species in a decade

Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: