SEMINARIOS MNCN 

Viernes 22 de junio de 2012, 12.00 horas.
Salón de Actos. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid. 

This lecture will be held in English.

Speaker: Barry Sinervo, Universidad de California, Santa Cruz, USA

Climate change has a profound effect on organisms but none more dramatic than local population extinction that culminates in species extinction. I will describe extinction estimates from lizards, which suggest we are entering into the era of climate forced extinctions. I use a physiological model to predict contemporary extinctions, and test the model across three continents in new surveys which have been conducted after the publication of original model (Sinervo et al. Science 2012).

I also develop analogous extinction models, premised on temperature and hydric physiology, for amphibians and test the model across the California biotic province. Extinctions in both vertebrate groups is  tightly associated with rapid successional changes in plants that elevate local operative environmental temperatures and also decrease moisture, precipitating extinctions.

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