EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Deforestation poses deleterious effects to tree-climbing species under climate change

Omer B. Zlotnick, Keith N. Musselman and Ofir Levy ()
Additional contact information
Omer B. Zlotnick: Tel-Aviv University
Keith N. Musselman: University of Colorado Boulder
Ofir Levy: Tel-Aviv University

Nature Climate Change, 2024, vol. 14, issue 3, 289-295

Abstract: Abstract Habitat loss poses a major threat to global biodiversity. Many studies have explored the potential damages of deforestation to animal populations but few have considered trees as thermoregulatory microhabitats or addressed how tree loss might impact the fate of species under climate change. Using a biophysical approach, we explore how tree loss might affect semi-arboreal diurnal ectotherms (lizards) under current and projected climates. We find that tree loss can reduce lizard population growth by curtailing activity time and length of the activity season. Although climate change can generally promote population growth for lizards, deforestation can reverse these positive effects for 66% of simulated populations and further accelerate population declines for another 18%. Our research underscores the mechanistic link between tree availability and population survival and growth, thus advocating for forest conservation and the integration of biophysical modelling and microhabitat diversity into conservation strategies, particularly in the face of climate change.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01939-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:14:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1038_s41558-024-01939-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-01939-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:14:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1038_s41558-024-01939-x