Lizards change their eating habits when the climate rises 2 degrees Celsius

Lizards usually live on an insect diet, including insects that eat plants like crickets, as well as carnivorous insects like spiders and beetles. According to a statement on October 30, the temperature only warmed up to 2 degrees Celsius, the lizard has changed eating habits , the trip to eat a lot of predatory insects.

Lizards change their habits, eating a lot of predatory insects as temperatures rise.

Research leader Elvire Bestion told AFP she was surprised at the results."Dietary changes are associated with the lower survival of adult lizards, but it's hard to say exactly why that is," she wrote in an email.

The team found that when temperatures were warmer, there were very few insects that hunted cows around, but the lizards still changed their habit of liking them more than plant-eating insects.

"One of our assumptions is that in warmer climates, lizards need more nutritious prey to meet their needs and switch diets to a diet that is high in animals," Ms. Bestion said. carnivorous backbone ".

This increases the competition between lizards for favorite food.

Changing the eating habits of lizards can disrupt the food chain as temperatures heat up.

Another noteworthy finding is that when the lizard's diet changes, their gut microbiota becomes less diverse, which can lead to a lower survival rate.

"The intestinal microflora is associated with many important functions, including digestion or immunity , " Bestion said.

Importantly, the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also showed that changing the reptiles' diet to predatory insects could disrupt the practice. eating habits in the food chain.

"We find the mechanisms of the effects of climate change to be more complex than just the effects of temperature on an animal," says Bestion .

Keeping global temperatures no higher than 2 degrees Celsius is an effort that was targeted at the Paris Agreement at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.